XDA

As this one from a few weeks ago makes clear.


Here's how Hillary Clinton really looks:

Or go here: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81264038/

Here is what Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said today:

“This is climate change,” Boxer said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather: Not just hot weather, but extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago — it’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather.”
“Carbon could cost us the planet,” Boxer added, plugging her own carbon tax bill, co-sponsored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

Here is the truth about big, deadly tornadoes in America over the past 60 years. The trend is down.


And here is the truth about tornado caused deaths in America over the past 88 years:
Downward trend there too. Wish it had stayed as low as 1986 this year.

Only the truly stupid would trot out the "Extreme Weather is Increasing Because of Global Warming" myth. It is easily disproved. Every time it's used.

New Taxes will not save Americans in the Midwest from tornadoes. It's such a disconnect, it makes my head swim.

UPDATE: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is just as stupid.

Labels: Extreme Weather Myth; Tornadoes

The FBI hate crime statistics are out for 2011 and it is not good news for the lefties who think the red states (particularly the South) are a cauldron of barely contained racial hatred.

Here are the stats for the former Confederacy (I left out Tennessee because it defected during the Civil War and because I wanted a list of 10 states to make figuring the average easier):

State               Incidents/Population                                 Hate Crimes per 100,000

Alabama             83/2.28 Million                                          3.64
Arkansas            11/2.9 Million                                              .38
Florida               123/18.9 Million                                          .65
Georgia               17/8.6 Million                                             .19
Louisiana             5/2.45 Million                                            .20
Mississippi           1/.75 Million                                              .14  (Mississippi had one hate crime)
North Carolina   112/9.65 Million                                         1.16
South Carolina   135/4.67 Million                                         2.89
Texas                  152/25.63 Million                                         .58
Virginia               144/8.09 Million                                         1.78

Thus the average number of hate crimes in the former Confederacy is 1.161/100,000 population.

Here are the stats for ten very blue states (and DC):

Washington          213/6.82 Million                                        3.13
Oregon                 128/2.43 Million                                        5.33
California            1,040/37.69 Million                                    2.76
Illinois                   69/9.96 Million                                           .69 (way to go, Illinois!)
Ohio                     228/9.88 Million                                         2.32
Michigan              346/9.56 Million                                         3.62
New York             544/19.29 Million                                       2.82
New Jersey           508/8.82 Million                                         5.77
Massachusetts      367/6.36 Million                                         5.77
DC                          83/.61 Million                                          13.6

Which means the bluest of the blue states (and district) average number of hate crimes is 4.581/100,000 population. That's a rate nearly four times the rate of the red states in the deep South, the former Confederacy.

Perhaps they ought to give up at the Southern Poverty Law Center, with its faux listing of "hate" groups, and open up the Democrat Party Governed Blue State Hate Watch Office instead. More good and less bad that way. I'd be paying special attention to DC, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Oregon. if I were them.

(h/t Ace of Spades)

Labels: Democrats Hatin', Hate Crime Statistics, SPLC

As Yogi Berra once perceptively said, "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." Here is a 2007 prediction about Arctic Sea Ice in 2013. It pretty much said all the sea ice would disappear this Summer. Or if not then certainly by 2030. Here is my shorter term prediction and the reasons supporting it:

On September 20, 2013, Arctic Sea Ice Area will be 4.6 Million square kilometers (about the size of India plus Peru plus Macedonia).

Below are two charts I'm relying on to make that prediction.

Sea Ice Area (as of two days ago)


and Mean Temperature north of 80 degrees North (which is way below normal right now).



Of course a bad storm which breaks up the ice (as happened last year) could change everything (See Yogi quote). But I think it will be safe to say at the end of Summer that the AGW True Believer predictors 6 years ago were full of it (as climate alarmists often are, more's the pity).

Oh, here's an interrupted in mid transmission shot from the robot camera we have at the North Pole. The Sun is out, but it's freakin' cold. The ice stretches over the horizon and is about 8 feet thick there.


I guess it could all melt away this Summer, but the odds are against it.

Labels: Arctic Sea Ice; Prediction

“I am the Sayer of the Law,” said the grey figure. “Here come all that be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say the Law.”	33
“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the doorway.	34
“Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape.”	35
“None escape,” said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.	36
“None, none,” said the Ape-man,—“none escape. See! I did a little thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is good!”	37
“None escape,” said the grey creature in the corner.	38
“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.	39
“For every one the want that is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law. “What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some want to follow things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill and bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’”

H.G. Wells

Labels: H.G. Wells quote; Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

Here's an iconic photo of the Battle of the Bulge, a German soldier with a bayonet carried just below his throat, 8mm machine gun belt (with disintegrating links, just like we use now) over his shoulder and a gun just out of view.



It's not the only war photo with him in it.


Here he is with his Nazi pals smoking a cigarette. He has a Browning 9mm pistol in his right hand (John Browning's last design, manufactured in captured Belgium). That's an American 6 wheel M8 armored car called a Greyhound in the background.



And yet again in a group photo. This time his hands are full of the Browning and an MG 42 with a bipod. Don't these guys know that cigarettes will kill you?



He's not in this photo, but a smoking Bengal Tiger tank is with two GIs walking past admiring it. The lead American soldier appears to have picked up an STG 44. Lots of soldiers pick up enemy weapons if they are better than the ones they carry. At one time it was believed that Ferdinand Porsche designed the turret on the tank, but that is a myth.

Labels: Battle Bulge photos

From normally well named Reason on line magazine comes this well thought out piece by Shikha Dalmia. But as good as it is, the essay contains these paragraph with one sour sentence within:

For two decades, progressives have castigated those questioning global warming as "deniers."

But the Economist, once firmly in the alarmist camp, recently acknowledged that global temperatures have remained stagnant for 15 years even as greenhouse-gas emissions have soared.

This may be because existing models have overestimated the planet's sensitivity. Or because the heat generated is sinking to the ocean bottom. Or because of something else completely.

Did you see it? The heat is sinking to the bottom of the ocean? What?

Warm ocean water is "lighter" than cold ocean water because it has thermally expanded and it has less salt in it. So the light floats on the dense and, like a piece of wood on any water, does not sink to the bottom unless it gets heavier than the water it displaces or has some outside force make it sink. εὑρίσκω!

So water warmed by the sun (that is, the first 100 feet or so from the surface down that visible light penetrates) does not sink unless it is forced down by subducting currents (downwelling) usually because of wind or the Ekman transport (whatever that is).

Warm water doesn't just sink into cold any more than ice held against your warm skin will warm you up.

The climate alarmists are desperate to account for the epic failure of their models vis a vis the recent 17 year halt in warming and (more recently) the last 11 years of actual cooling. It was one of the more famous, whistle-blower-leaked emails where climate alarmist Kevin Trenberth wrote: The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

Travesty is the right word for climate alarmism, 

So the warming has to be at the bottom of the ocean where it slipped to past the 3000 Argo buoys undetected and in violation of the physical rules of Nature. It just has to be.

And this demented wish leaks out into otherwise normal thinking of people like Ms. Dalmia.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax; cross contamination of thought

But no matter how much money I make, I always seem to spend just a little bit more. Am I chasing happiness?

Labels: Happiness, Money

Many gun control advocates are saying we need background checks for internet sales. I have a question. If you buy a gun on line, who's going to deliver it to you?

The USPS, UPS, Fedex and DHL will only deliver a gun purchased from a non FFL holder to a licensed gun dealer (or manufacturers or collectors, etc., all with federal licenses).
They will ship from an FFL holder to an individual with no such license.

So where is the loophole here? The FFL holder has to run a background check when he or she sells a gun or when he or she receives one to pass on to a non licensed purchaser. Either way, the background check is performed.

Right?

If the gun control advocates are merely complaining that the internet merely helps buyers find sellers find each other for a face to face buy on the black market, welcome to the 21st Century party, pal.

Labels: Gun Control; Internet sales non-problem

Labels: Devo Dogs

Given the hysterics about recent minor melting of the Greenland icecap, one might think that the climate there is getting warmer. One would be wrong.

This paper in Nature says that rapid outflow of the glaciers at the sea termini comes in waves and will likely soon start adding just about .01 mm per year to the sea level. That's not an alarming amount.

A paper in Science says that the melting in Greenland can come to a near complete stop on a dime, or so reports Mother Jones.

And this sad story tells the result of people believing the hype to their permanent disadvantage. Money quotes:

Phil Goodeve-Docker, 30, had been attempting a 370-mile unsupported charity walk across Greenland with friends Andy Norman and Roan Hackney when they were hit by a “Piteraq” storm two days into the 30 to 35-day expedition.

[...]

Mr Goodeve-Docker, who ran the Purple Cactus comedy agency in Hammersmith and lived in Ealing, had been attempting what he called a “frankly nutty adventure” in memory of his grandfather Patrick Pirie-Gordon, who died two years ago.

[...]

The expedition was being led by Mr Hackney, who lives in London, while Mr Norman, who works for the Army and lives in Ascot, was like Mr Goodeve-Docker a “rookie” explorer. The trip had been delayed by by a week by “white out” storms. Two years ago another expedition led by Mr Hackney was defeated half-way when a freak storm destroyed tents and equipment.

Guys! It's freakin' cold in Greenland, even in late Spring. Wait 'til full Summer if you have to go there at all. Deadly cold.

Labels: Global Warming Propaganda; Greenland; Freezing to Death