Warming? Cooling? Whatever is convenient

The BBC News reports that not only has global warming disappeared to be replaced by global cooling, but that this cooling trend will continue for some time.

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

Why so truthful all of the sudden? It's hard to know the motive. Perhaps the bald-faced lies perpetuated by the rabid global-warming crowd were finally so obviously at odds with reality that cooler heads (pardon the pun) decided that if any vestige of the human-caused climate catastrophe crowd were to survive, it would have to be admitted that climate change was at very least not confined to warming trends and rising sea levels.

I personally am rather confused by the warming catastrophe crowd, considering some of them seemed to be convinced that by tomorrow morning the Atlantic might very well be lapping at our thresholds, while others were simultaneously predicting an apocalypse so slow in coming that we might well be living on other planets before it arrives.

Meanwhile, evidently it was getting colder all the time...
Now record cold temperatures are being seen all over.

We should note, however, that while climate change skeptics see this cooling as justification for their skepticism of inexorably rising global temperatures, true believers' faith in the heat death of the world by our own hands continues unabated:

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

Yes, thus spoke the oracle: Centuries-long ice ages may interfere, as in the past, but at some day in the hypothetical future, it will get hotter than it is now. Other scientists agree:

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

Notice the language here. Does anyone not realize that this has taken on all the artifices of a religious institution? Dr. Latif, worried that he might be perceived as a nonbeliever in Warming, clarifies that despite the scientific data stating otherwise, he is not a skeptic! Yes, we must have faith that the heat is coming. Ignore the cooling trend. Just believe. Sooner or later a heating trend will re-emerge, then we can start all this up again.

Meanwhile, the American people are less and less convinced; polls show that significantly fewer Americans are worried that Florida will go the way of the Siberian land bridge any time soon...

The new poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is “solid evidence” for the existence of global warming, compared to 71 percent in April 2008.

Additionally, the poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe global warming is caused by human activity has dropped from 47 percent last year to 36 percent today.

One can only hope this means we'll hear less hysteria about carbon footprints and other such nonsense related to carbon dioxide levels, which have never been causally linked to warming anyway. But "Cap-and-Trade" is already here, and something tells me that more of the same taxes are coming whether facts or the American people back them up or not. It's not a question of reality or democracy anymore. As President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus (currently being sidelined in the EU for being a disagreeist) has pointed out, global climate change politics is just a power-play.

So should we sit idly by and watch our freedoms be taken for whatever trendy excuse the religio-scientific backers of the liberal pan-bureaucracy may contrive? We already have been. And that realization is by far the most frightening thing I'll encounter this halloween...

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Update: Transparency

It would appear that the Democratic party is backing off of it's "transparency in government" goal.

House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol.

Only pre-approved visitors are allowed to hear what the massive health care bill is going to do? And they've gone so far as to block off normally public entrances. If they are unwilling to let the public hear about the bill, can we expect to get the promised 72 hours for everyone to read the bill before voting occurs? The Obama administration seems to be breaking a lot of campaign promises. I wonder if anyone in real journalism will notice.

UPDATE: Looks like the promise to leave the final bill up online for 72 hours has been officially broken.

Conservativity Rising

It appears that more Americans are identifying themselves as conservatives this year.
Gallup has the numbers...

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Predictably, liberals in charge of government have caused a number of Americans to react by shifting towards the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. This is partly because this time, they are so much more dramatically militant, in-your-face liberals than Americans are accustomed to seeing in positions of power. (People, for example, such as Obama adviser Robert Reich who say things like: "We are going to have to, if you are very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you, maybe, going for another couple of months. It's too expensive. So, we're going to let you die.")

This sort of thing horrifies decent people, who react away from it. But it works both ways, and people are sadly vulnerable to pressure on how they ought to think. It's a natural process; those same outraged people might well trend back into liberal territory under a conservative administration. (or what passes for one these days)

In fact, it's likely that these are indeed middle-grounders who moved towards the fringes of the liberal camp during the later Bush years, in reaction to issues such as the Iraq War and the perceived threat of anthropogenic climate change, but who are now drifting back to the average American slightly-conservative-but-not-very-well-informed moderatism.

It has been predicted that America will continue to follow this trend, due if nothing else to higher birthrates among conservatives. (though this trend is greatly eclipsed by the ongoing northward migration of and birth rates among immigrants, which will play a far greater role in political shifts in America to come) Yet at the same time, polls clearly indicate that younger Americans (the 18-29 crowd) are much more liberal than their older counterparts.

One thing that sticks out, however, is that the increases in Conservativity (if one may so phrase it) and in Liberalism, while somewhat antagonistic to each other, both came at the expense of the moderate camp, which has been in decline since 2005.

In other words, people are slowly moving away from the middle, towards the opposite ends of the spectrum. Further information on the Gallup site confirms this:

While these figures have shown little change over the past decade, the nation appears to be slightly more polarized than it was in the early 1990s. Compared with the 1992-1994 period, the percentage of moderates has declined from 42% to 35%, while the percentages of conservatives and liberals are up slightly -- from 38% to 40% for conservatives and a larger 17% to 21% movement for liberals.

Yet some of us refuse to see the issue as we are being told to see it. That is, with two camps (Republicans on the conservative to moderate-conservative side, and Democrats on the liberal to moderate-liberal side) fighting for the attentions of the balanced Americans in the center who haven't chosen a side yet.

Sometimes the old paradigms need to be replaced. This conception of the two party system is one of them. I don't agree with much I hear from either side these days, and I think I'm not at all alone in that. Obama captured the hearts of a large portion of America's population by getting them to believe that he was "for them", in a deep and meaningful sense. His falling popularity seems to be a sign that Americans are starting to realize that he is not. (whether they grasp on a collective scale that many of his policies are exactly the opposite of what we need right now, or were merely empty rhetoric, remains to be seen. If that is beginning to happen, we'll see popularity levels around 40% before the end of his first year, I suspect.)

Americans want representation by their government, and the simmering dissatisfaction that makes itself known at things like the tea parties, town hall meetings, and other demonstrations will only increase as Washington in general, together with this administration in specific, attempt to hijack our nation for their own ideologies.

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The Forum Troll President

I have had an interesting time picking a story to write on for the past few days. An extremely busy weekend made it easy to delay the choice altogether, but I realized that I was shying away from stories involving our president. Enough has already been said about him, certainly, and yet I find myself writing one more entry about him today.

Obama has achieved and maintained total media saturation (indeed, with the media's acknowledged support and involvement) since his nomination, with significant coverage before then. That has not diminished. With the reception of the Nobel Peace Prize, the failed bid for the Olympics in Chicago, the situation in Afghanistan; everyone is waiting to see what the president will do.

Even aside from the media, in our national discussion President Obama has been like an especially controversial troll in a forum; some take his side and defend him, others hate him with that special hatred reserved for forum trolls, but either way he has now taken whatever discussion existed prior to his involvement and focused it entirely around himself and his statements.

This is what President Obama, consciously or unconsciously (considering the skills of his media team, probably consciously), has done on the national stage. Perhaps it's also the forte of a populist president; if you wish to run as a personality and not a platform, your personality must necessarily remain in focus if your goals are to be achieved.

Obama has gambled daringly that his 'brand' is sufficient to sustain loyalty to his goals and ideals. This has largely worked. (with perhaps the notable exception of the tea-party attendee types, who have been marginalized by the White House as disagreeists. Whether they can be successfully marginalized or not is a question for another time, but while they are numerous, they are still a clear minority.) It's interesting to note that if his brand becomes unpopular, his clout vanishes. He is only left with the usual political maneuvering, in a field where he is still a newcomer.

But for now, the president has the world's attention. The peace prize was as clear a sign of this as could be given. Consider Bono's recent editorial in the NYT. It's quite glorifying of President Obama, and at the same time surprisingly pro-American. More insightful pundits than me will doubtless pull many valuable observations from his take, but let me focus on one of the most obvious: The world is calling, and Obama is America's chance to respond.

Obama is our first global president. Perhaps fitting as America's power and influence in the world peaks and enters a decline (perhaps 'the' decline, but it's too early to call), a man has risen to the top who is using that high platform to spread idealism throughout the world. Many feel, as does this writer, that some (not all) of those ideals are flawed at best. But that is irrelevant in a global sense. I submit that the world in general feels more ownership of our president than we do, and that is both based in his approach to the world, and mirrored in his response to it.

Liberally-minded (in the modern political sense) Americans feel very strongly the pressure of the rest of the world opinion weighing in, and are finally basking in the glow of a president they think they just might be proud to show the world. For example, let us consider that the left end of the political comedy spectrum (SNL and the Daily Show), previously unwilling to mock Obama even in a tangential sense, are now doing so. But unlike former president Bush, it is not his ideals that they mock, nor his actions, but his inaction. Obama is their applicant to the rest of the world, to demonstrate their solidarity, to show that the world's most touted issues (environmentalism, poverty, nuclear disarmanent, etc) are their issues as well. They see this as their shot to be at the world's table not because of American's power, (a reason they would despise, like a crass and socially awkward uncle who nevertheless is invited to every family party because he also happens to be extremely wealthy) but as sensitive, knowing, and worldly intellectuals who belong there. Obama is their personified manifesto, their best shot yet at getting in. They don't want him to mess this up.
Neither does the rest of the world, as Bono writes:

"The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, 'Don’t blow it.'"

Conservatives often make two mistakes in their response, either blowing off the rest of the world altogether as irrelevant (short-sighted, unwise, and furthermore uncharitable: in these times, "no man is an island" applies to nations more than ever), or else attacking those ideals of Obama which are demonstrably false, yet without supplying their own methods of dealing with the problems he purports to be solving.

Example of the latter: People do need health care. I believe that no plan currently circulating through our congress would be anything less than a disaster, but our current situation is clearly inexcusably bad as well. While I have heard many compelling reasons given in impassioned speech as to why Obama's plan should be consigned to a place where the worm does not die, nor is thirst ever quenched, I have not yet heard a single agreed-upon workable alternative solution by those opposing the Obama plan.

What does that accomplish on a national level? The president (who seeks to advance his goals by the force of his own personality, remember) could easily claim that the attacks are not really against the health plan, but against himself. In fact, he doesn't even need to say this. His backers can do that for him. And we see that this is exactly what is occurring now. To return to the analogy, the troll has struck again. The forum topic is no longer health care, but all the commenters' opinions of the troll himself, generally expressed in wholesale irrational favor or disfavor. Few bring forth a detached, logical analysis of the forum troll and his arguments. He is now setting the agenda. His provocative statements, and existing opinions about his kind, generally reduce all conversation to endorsements, rejections, or endless bickering. Eventually the topic is closed, no meaningful progress having been made on the subject.

If we seek to have a meaningful national dialogue on anything worth accomplishing, this trolling must end. The president has ushered in a new era in which every political argument defaults back to himself. He remains the center of attention, and as long as we all argue about him, he wins. For is not that the goal of the troll?

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September 11th, 2008?

It is possible that, on September 11th, 2008, at 11AM, our nation's financial system was attacked and almost destroyed.

This is not a shock claim, or the contrived theory of a few fringe lunatics, this is a fact. On a morning in September, $550 billion suddenly began to be electronically extracted from our nations money markets. This could have led to a total collapse of the system had it not been quickly shut down.

But don't take my word for it. Representative Kanjorksi from Pennsylvania has the facts. He starts talking about it around 2:00. Listen carefully.




The collapse of the US economy and the end of our political system as we know it?

His words, not mine. If I am understanding him correctly, they were briefed on the 15th, and the attacks took place the preceding Thursday. He said 11AM. That means the massive withdrawal started on September 11th, 2008, 11AM. Within a few minutes of the exact moment of the 7th anniversary of the planes hitting the towers in NYC.

Why has this information not been made more public? I don't know, but the knowledge makes me uneasy. The sudden, urgently needed bailouts, the subsequent shock to the world's financial system, the major shifts in our national economy, the government acquisition of large portions of the financial infrastructure and automotive industry, now the call to shift away from the US Dollar and stop using it for oil transactions, all this resulted from the sudden withdrawals on that day.

This is not even new information. It came out this past February, as best I can tell. Did you know? I didn't. But now you know too. And it doesn't take a genius to realize that something's seriously wrong here.

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The global reign of the dollar is over?

Soon the US Dollar will not be the currency used for oil transactions, The Independent (UK) reports...

"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar."

First thought: I don't really blame them. Our leaders have been irresponsible enough in handling our economy, and our problems have spilled over and affected the entire world's economy. If the dollar is going to be unstable, swapping to a basket of currencies makes sense.

Second thought: "a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar." - A fledgling pan-Arabic Muslim currency, anyone? That sounds like a portentous global economy shift waiting to happen.

And lest you think that this is merely a hysterical prognosis of some fringe economist:

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The article darkly hints at a future conflict between the US and China over Middle East oil, but we will pass over this idle speculation for the meatier material on actual Chinese involvement in the situation:

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls.

The Chinese tend to be practical economists these days. A burgeoning economy in desperate need of resources such as oil to fuel its rise is well-served by increased economic ties to the countries with said resources. And unlike us, they are not likely to go about things in an ambivalent manner, hesitating between pragmatic manipulation of the areas with the resources we need and condemnations of our "self-serving" involvement there. The Chinese economic engine needs more oil to run on, and thus they will do what it takes to get more oil.

Meanwhile, we won't even drill for the oil we already possess domestically. Small wonder our economy is flagging while theirs is set to pass us by mid-century.

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. President Obama has given no sign that this would be a move that he disagreed with. In fact, such a shift seems perfectly in line with the "New world order" he likes to give speeches about. (that speech was meant to be uplifting; upon reading the transcript I was instead quite interested in determining exactly what worldview our President holds. Not one in which the British are held in high regard, that much is certain...) I would not be surprised at all if he gave a speech lauding the move away from the US dollar, as a good plan to diminish US hegemony and level the world's playing field. He is, after all, not only a US citizen, but "a fellow citizen of the world." (second paragraph of the transcript)

This means, apparently, that he would never be so jingoistic as to put the concerns of his own country above the concerns of others. Which is lovely, except that he is not the president of the world, he is the president of the United States of America. His responsibility is not to "remake the world once again

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/24/obama-in-berlin-video-of_n_114771.html

" (the last words in his speech), but to lead our nation in a responsible way.

So the dollar is on its way out as a global medium of exchange. Is anyone willing to fight for it?

Not our Elected Citizen of the World in Chief.

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Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/24/obama-in-berlin-video-of_n_114771.htm

An Economy of Errors

Two reports about the economy, within one week of each other:

First report: (Sept. 24th) New unemployment claims drop unexpectedly!

WASHINGTON -- The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits in the U.S. fell for the third straight week, evidence that layoffs are continuing to ease in the earliest stages of an economic recovery.

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 530,000 from an upwardly revised 551,000 the previous week. Wall Street economists expected claims to rise by 5,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Second report: (Oct. 1st) New unemployment claims rise unexpectedly!

WASHINGTON -- First-time claims for jobless benefits increased more than expected last week in the U.S., a sign employers are reluctant to hire and the job market remains weak...

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 551,000 from 534,000 in the previous week. Wall Street economists expected an increase of 5,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

So one week, they are excited to report that job claims fell from 551,000 to to an adjusted 530,000. The next week, they are surprised to report that the claims rose to an adjusted 551,000 -from- 534,000. Amazing...

Fundamentals of economic growth are more or less a given. In exceptional times, people construct elaborate theories to pretend the fundamentals can be ignored. (I recall breathless economic forecasters demonstrating how in theory, the tech bubble could go on expanding forever; a never-ending boom with no bust.)

But sooner or later they always come back. You cannot ignore the basic rules of national economies forever and get away with it. We listened to the music, now it's time to pay the piper, and he doesn't accept debit or credit.

The roots of our economy are being hacked away, and these people are trying to gauge its strength by counting the number of leaves that haven't fallen yet. I suppose if the whole tree falls down, they'll be delighted to report that an unexpectedly high number of new fungi growths indicates that life is returning to it after all...

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