So what we have here are “Scientists”, caught red-handed trying to doctor data, jiggle the “Peer Review” process and defame rather than scientifically refute their critics, in a scam whose goal was to secure their funding and, by the way, bring epic and unprecedented political power to their (inevitably liberal) political benefactors – which is, by any measure, fraud.  Which is a crime.

But Barbara Boxer – the stupidest person ever to serve as a US Senator – knows who the real enemies are:

“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,'” she said during a committee meeting. “Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I’m looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public.”

The e-mails, from scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained through hacking.

That seems an odd thing to state as a conclusion; I’ve heard that it’s equally likely they were obtained from a conscientious whistle-blower.

At any rate,  Boxer seems to be serving the dictates of her lord and master Rahm Emanual, and is putting this crisis to good use:

Boxer said her committee may hold hearings into the matter as its top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), has asked for, but that a criminal probe would be part of any such hearings.

“We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not,” Boxer said. “Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.

“This is a crime,” Boxer said.

The biggest crime of all is that Barbara Boxer has a job more responsible than serving burgers at a truck stop.

Professors, ironically, claim that all their notes on man-made global warming got lost when their moms inadvertenty tossed ’em.  Really:

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss [of, like, all the raw data “supporting” their “thesis”] following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

Which must have been when the dogs got it.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

I’ve long held that the biggest problem with the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, other than the very presence of Algore,  is that the entire approach has been fundamentally political rather than scientific; not just in the way that all evidence that would seem to support the theory is taken as proof, but that all evidence that would seem to undercut the theory is considered proof as well, of course, but in the way that “scientists” and their p0litical benefactors declared the debate irrevocably settled even as skepticism grew rather than shrank.

And this was before it transpired that the leading proponents are, it would seem, scientific frauds.

It took almost thirty years for the last Japanese soldiers to believe that Hirohito had surrendered.  There are still Nazis, Communists and Independence Party “members” around and about.   I don’t think Kathleen Soliah and her supporters around California and Highland Park have sworn off their violent pasts even today.  And with those as behavioral models, it would seem we’re going to be stuck with the detritus of the AGW cult for quite some time.

But perhaps we’ve turned the corner, and with the bullying and hectoring of the fake-science lobby terminally discredited, perhaps we can actually deal with the problems that do exist.  Whatever they are.

From the tearful pleas of rock stars to politicians pounding their hammy fists, the Man Made Global Warming movement has been a maypole for liberals for what seems like twenty years now.

…and gave Algore a suitable purpose for his deceitful, pathetic life.

Watch now as world leaders quietly turn their backs and walk briskly away.

As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.

It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria.

“So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,'” Inhofe said.

Darn it all. I was so hoping not to have to move South in my twilight years.

I thought these “scientists” were just liberal zombies contentedly suckling at the teet of government grants, doing the Motherland’s bidding; the all-growed-up version of the career protesters I observed when I attended the U.

Now, it turns out they were [dramatic music] evil doers!

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

Leave it to the StarTribune to discount the findings, toss the word “evidence” in there for good measure and  essentially say “Sorry. Too late, officer. The Kool Aid is drunk already.”

But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

…because it’s already been eroding…without the help of hackers.

With their help however we have this:

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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide a decline” in temperatures.

The good news? Algore made a Billion and can retire. Maybe he’ll keep his yap shut now.

As I’ve said in the past, abortion isn’t my biggest hot-button issue.  I figure if the terrorists win, the staffs at NARAL and Pro Life Action are equally screwed.

But as I’ve also said in the past, I think technology is going to sway this issue in favor of pro-lifers.  The number of abortions is dropping, in significant part because as modern, cheap, ubiquitous ultrasound shows people that a “fetus” is identifiably human looong before Planned Parenthood will cop to it, they get second thoughts about aborting.  And the ultrasound is changing minds – more Americans now identify as pro-life than pro-death.

Which is background to this story:  Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas, prodded by watching an ultrasound of a “tissue mass” being killed off, has defected to the good guys:

“I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it.”

Johnson claims that Planned Parenthood, strapped for money, was pushing to make abortion Safe, Legal and a Profit Center; they make more money from “terminations” than counseling, apparently.

Planned Parenthood is seeking a restraining order – not against Johnson’s presence on their property (Johnson has been appearing with “Coalition for Life”, a pro-life group, in pray-ins at the Planned Parenthood clinic) but against the potential for client confidentiality to be violated.  Which, I suspect, really means “talking about abortion”.

At any rate – this is how abortion gets settled as an issue; as millions of individuals get convinced by seeing the awful truth (or, less traumatically, the palpable humanity of their own “tissue masses” with their own eyes.

I’m currently (okay, not currently, but I wrote this during lunch – ed.) watching big fluffy flakes of an entirely-localized weather phenomenon which should not be considered indicative in any way of the global climate trend (ELWPWSNBCIIAWOTGCT) fall from the sky. By my reckoning this is about the fourth such ELWPWSNBCIIAWOTGCT this month. In this part of Minnesota it would be unusual (though not unprecedented) to have even one such ELWPWSNBCIIAWOTGCT before November. Four ELWPWSNBCIIAWOTGCTs is pretty notable, and just serves as a vivid reminder how much colder than normal most of this year – especially this month – has been.

Which probably goes a long way toward explaining this…

Survey Says: Americans Not Worried About Global Warming

A new poll out today on Americans’ attitudes about climate change presents sobering findings for those that favor aggressive action to curb U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who see solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. According to the survey, conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, fewer respondents also see global warming as a very serious problem; 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

The survey also points to a decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

The thing is, I am perfectly and contentedly aware that those fluffy white flakes outside my window truly are a local phenomenon and that they do not tell me anything about the global climate. But then I also think the same whenever some hot-headed alarmist points to a single melting glacier, stranded polar bear, or Australian drought as part of the global warming “evidence all around us.” If you’re going to invest so much time and energy fashioning a petard, you ought to be aware about the dangers of hoisting is my point.

It’s entirely possible I’m totally wrong in my views about global warming (it’s natural) and mankind’s role in it (negligible). But even if I’m wrong about that I’m certainly not going to make the foolish argument that the snow flying around outside my window at the moment proves my point. I am, however, going to engage in a little shadenfreude as the fluffy white flakes of ELWPWSNBCIIAWOTGCT help to put a very real chill on the attempted panic of public opinion regarding global warming and the “evidence all around us.”

[note: It’s probably a good idea to note that the above was written by Bogus Doug and not Mitch.  In the site’s recent technical issues, we seem to have lost the post-author thingy.]

[Mitch adds:  The “author name” thing will be fixed this weekend.  Especially if it’s too rainy for yard work]

Rejoice, because you are alive: An asteroid named 2009TM8 just passed only 216,000 miles from Earth, racing at 18,163mph. That’s closer than the moon.

I traveled to The Badlands in South Dakota this past week where you can literally see millions of years of earth’s history locked in a lava parfait; most of which took place without our existence, let alone our negligible impact

…and UK PM Gordon Brown, who has no scientific basis and of course no political agenda to further, says we have had 50 days to save Mother Earth.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the “impasse”.

Mr Brown warned that negotiators were not reaching agreement quickly enough and said it was a “profound moment” for the world involving “momentous choice”.

“So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue.”

Sorry, Sir. You mean cooling trends, right?

See, if I were Brown, I’d use even more syllables that that…to underscore the behemothic endangerment; the precariousness of our posterity.

What an amateur.

Meanwhile venues from Australia to here in the Twin Cities have experienced the coldest first two weeks in October on record.

HT John H

World oil and gas reserves E are vastly, vastly higher than predicted:

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply – and rising fast.

“There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources,” he said.

Gas reserves in particular are seemingly immense – and, being a clean-burning fuel already, should obviate the need for “clean coal” (which is still on the drawing board).

Downside; pundits are seeing this news and saying it pre-empts the need for new nuke plants.  Let’s not get cocky, here…

Headline: “Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil:

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Subsidies for the Saudis.

Call it “Cash for Monarchs”.

For about forty years the greatest scientific experts in the world were in broad agreement that the evolution of the human species included a critical phase involving a large brained but otherwise ape-like creature known as Eoanthropus dawsoni, or, more colloquially “Piltdown Man.” Piltdown man was discovered by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson in a gravel pit in the village of Piltdown, in East Sussex, England. Dawson subsequently presented his find to the Geographical Society of London in 1912.

So broadly accepted was the existence of this creature as a critical step of human evolution that it was cited by famed lawyer Clarence Darrow in perhaps the most famous event in in the popular mind involving evolutionary theory since Darwin – the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1926. However in 1953 the world was stunned to discover that, far from being a critical step in human evolution, Piltdown Man had never existed at all. The fossil which lead to this belief was, in fact, a hoax.

But despite its notoriety there are useful lessons we can draw from the Piltdown hoax. One of the central lessons is that whenever a scientific problem beckons for a solution there is a predisposition within the scientific community to accept a certain kind of solution: the kind of solution which neatly fits the prevailing assumptions.

Piltdown was accepted readily despite flaws which were apparent from the start because it fit. It was not some groundbreaking revelation which caused scientists to rethink their assumptions about human evolution. Far from it. It was the very fulfillment of those assumptions. It was the long sought after “missing link” between man and the ape, and it looked exactly like they assumed it would – a big-brained ape. Mankind, so the thinking of the time went, first developed intelligence and afterward learned to walk upright and make tools and use language and the like. That was the story of human evolution as science was trying to tell it. Piltdown looked like it could have walked right out of that story book.

(more…)

The latest chapter of the left’s carefully reasoned and mature dialogue on public policy comes from the UK Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland:

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But think again.

Got it. If President Obama doesn’t get “his way” on health care we’re all gonna die!!! This is exactly the kind of cool, dispassionate reason we’ve come to depend on from the left, and why we take their warnings about overheated rhetoric coming from the right so seriously.

Anyway, I sure hope the president gets around to deciding what “his way” on health care is supposed to be, and letting the Democratic leadership in Congress know. Is he going to get working on that right after this next round of speeches or something? Now that we know the planet is doomed without his stamp of approval on some kind of actual health reform thingy, can he maybe shift his schedule around to get cracking on this?

Because I, for one, can’t wait to see the kind of super-human focus and bipartisan coalition he brings to bear on < superhero-theme-music > saving the planet < /superhero-theme-music > after his dazzling performance on health care… insurance… whatever… reform.

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

If you’re new to Friedman’s writing, or perhaps still nostalgically influenced by his presumably serious position as a columnist for the New York Times, you might think this is merely an attention grabbing opening lede which will be smoothly integrated into an otherwise sensible opinion piece as he develops his thoughts on this. You possibly also still believe in the Easter Bunny.

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Apparently tired of letting Western millionaires have all the fun bashing the world’s leading economic nations while demanding huge sacrifices of their wealth as payment for ruining the planet, the nations of Africa decided to jump into the game. Being new to this particular shakedown racket you’ll forgive them for their embarrassing directness:

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 25 (IPS) – An African Union proposal demanding billions of dollars in compensation for the impacts of climate change is taking shape.

It is time for Africa to aggressively engage with climate change negotiations to ensure its interests are met in the designing of global responses, said African Union (AU) Commission chair Jean Ping. AU officials say the lack of a coordinated stance on global warming by African governments has placed serious limitations on Africa’s ability to negotiate in the past. To put this right, a meeting to formulate a common stand ahead of the Copenhagen meeting has just concluded in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

African experts on climate change and high-level representatives of AU member states have recommended Africa demand between $67 billion and $200 billion annually in compensation.

There’s something almost refreshing in the directness here. No attempt to get rich on the sly via some hard to understand “cap and trade” scheme, or misdirected funds or grants with earth-friendly names. Their message is simple: Pay. Up.

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Quick: which era would you consider the greatest in human history? I’ll give you a few moments to think about it.

…

…

…

What did you come up with? Did you choose the classical era, with the birth of modern philosophy, democracy, and classical art? Or perhaps you’re someone who appreciates the achievements of the modern world, in which the health and wealth of people around the world is greater than its ever been? Or did you focus on some other time? The era of revolution perhaps where men through off the rule of kings for representative governments?
Turns out you’re all wrong. It’s actually been all downhill since the Paleolithic…

IMAGINE a small group of farmers tending a rice paddy some 5,000 years ago in eastern Asia or sowing seeds in a freshly cleared forest in Europe a couple of thousand years before that. It is here, a small group of scientists would have you believe, that humanity launched climate change. Long before the Industrial Revolution—indeed, long before a worldwide revolution in intensive farming, the results of which kept humanity alive—people caused unnatural exhalations of greenhouse gases that had an impact on the world’s climate.

I imagine this is just the first step in a longer scientific trend leading to the conclusion that coming down from the trees was a bad idea in the first place. And of course this will be rivaled by the school of scientific thought contending that the trees themselves were a bad move and we shouldn’t have even left the oceans (a little inside joke there, from a book which rapidly seems to find it’s once absurd-seeming humor challenged by an increasingly absurd reality).

Minnesota came close to repealing its decade-and-a-half old ban on nuclear power plants in the last session; the Senate approved the repeal, and it failed in the House by about a dozen votes.

A new group, spanning some unlikely bedfellows, has spawned to Ctry to fix the problem:

A coalition of business, labor and environmental leaders has joined a new nonprofit organization to advocate repeal of Minnesota’s ban on new nuclear power plants.

Three veteran Republican operatives organized the group, Sensible Energy Solutions for Minnesota, but on Tuesday they announced formation of a bipartisan board of advisers that represents a wide range of interests.

I’m going to try to book some of these people on the NARN one of these weekends.  Minnesota’s “moratorium” – a culmination of years of paranoia about plants and waste in the nineties – is a vestige from a time of cheap energy and cheaper solutions to vexing issues. 

It’ll be most interesting, as Cap and Trade promised to jack up heating bills enough to make Minnesota too expensive to live in for anyone making less than $60,000 year, to see the defenses the left comes up for this “moratorium”. 

…and apparently failed out as well.

Ten Democrats, including our own embarrassment, Al Franken, are flirting with the idea of turning a near global economic collapse into a full economic collapse. In the name of what? An ever-evolving political land-grab called Global Warming Cooling Climate Change.

The Chinese have already grown in both their skepticism of our solvency as well as their ability to wreak havoc on a US economy that has only recently been moved from the ICU.

Ten Senate Democrats whose votes are pivotal to the success of climate legislation urged the Obama administration on Thursday to support levying tariffs on goods from countries that don’t limit their greenhouse-gas emissions.

…Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Carl Levin of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Al Franken of Minnesota.

From a friend, mentor and founder of a successful money management firm, Peter R.:

“Let’s collect a carbon tariff on imports so we don’ t offshore our carbon production. I’m sure that a trade war with China won’t affect their desire to finance our deficits.”

Those deficits being the bi-products of the failed Bush/Obama “Stimulus” packages and the recently resuscitated CARS fiasco, among a myriad of other unfunded, wasteful and ineffective government expenditures.

The wars of the future may be fought on the internet and in the currency markets. We have allowed the Chinese to gain the upper hand via decades of arrant government fiscal policies. We have found ourselves in the unenviable position of relying on their goodwill.

This is no time to hug a tree.

Setting aside the unpleasantness which characterizes so much of our political discourse today, I’d like to turn my attention to something which we can all celebrate together, as it has absolutely no potential downside.

If you live in a city with a good metro system, you’re probably used to having a swipe card system of some sort – load up money on the card, swipe it as you enter the station and as you exit, and your card is deducted the amount that ride cost…. [W]hat if your swipe card were based on carbon emissions instead? That’s the idea proposed by designer Nick Hunter for this wearable carbon emissions tracker.

Rather than a key or a card, the carbon meter would fit on your hand and glows a particular color – green, yellow, orange or red – depending on how well you’re using your public transportation allowance. Are you saving more carbon by hopping onto a train for a short ride, or would the hybrid bus have actually had the smaller footprint? The meter would let you know. But there’s more…it’d give the government insight on how well the public transportation systems are being used.

Isn’t that great? No longer do we need to debate the complicated trade-offs of energy use versus freedom in regard to an individual’s personal transportation decisions (let alone worry about the tedious science underlying hundred year climate forecasting based on projected human carbon emissions… bo-ring!). The government will take all of that burden off our hands, providing us a rating from “nice” all the way to “naughty” without requiring us to fill out a single form or stand in any lines! All we need to do is put on our government issued “wearable carbon emissions tracker.”

Here’s a picture of what the new wearable emissions device might look like. Prepare to see the future…

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Do you know Kim Carlson, the “footprint blogger” at the Star Tribune? No? You don’t think so? I believe you’re mistaken. You may not know Kim Carlson by name or by her Strib blog, but you certainly know Kim Carlson. As evidence I submit the first line of her latest post:

I was feeling a bit virtuous as I was bringing my recycling to the curb this morning.

Not many people can summarize their entire personality in a single phrase, but I think Kim did a terrific job of it here, don’t you? I mean you absolutely know this person after reading that sentence. Kim is the kind of person who believes she’s “saving the planet” by her own everyday activities. Recycling makes her feel virtuous. But it doesn’t end there, as you well know. No, when you’re Kim Carlson life is little more than a quest for the next guilt trip.

Then I decided to look up some recycling facts and was quickly deflated. According to RethinkRecycling.com, the average Twin Citian still produces 7 pounds of waste per day and one-third of what we throw away at home is recyclable through curbside programs. I suppose it is no surprise that nearly 30 percent of our trash is packaging – urgh!

Urgh! indeed! Why oh why didn’t we compost our packaging or use it as feed for our backyard chickens?! Why oh why didn’t we… oh heck, let’s stop guessing and see where she decides to run with it. It’s bound to be as entertainingly goofy as anything we might invent.

(more…)

You’re welcome then.

Drive like a sheep, and you get stuck. Break some rules here and there for the good of traffic flow, and everyone benefits. A new traffic study by physicists at Sweden’s Umea University found that while we’re all taught to obey the traffic rules no matter what, doing so just makes for bottlenecks. Mix in some maverick drivers, however, and suddenly, logjams begin to ease as the percentage of drivers willing to pass on the right or zip past a pack of trundling cars on a two-lane actually help to keep the traffic flowing smoothly.

So those middle fingers are a solute to my service to road goers after all.

India rejects global warming hysteria.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.

He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.

India realizes what conservatives do; that the only way to react to any sort of global climate change (whether man-made or not) is to spread as widely as possible the kind of prosperity that makes innovation possible.  Because it’s innovation, not retrenchment, that’ll solve whatever issues humanity does face with the environment.

It’s not a new observation – modern environmentalism has become a religion.  It’s got many of the worst aspects of “organized religion”; skepticism and questioning are chastized by those who cloak their insecurities in the trappings of faith; apostasy is condemned; dogma is defended without mercy and, by the less-intelligent adherents, thought.

Bogus Doug has another angle on the issue:

I don’t find that explanation quite satisfactory. It’s not that environmentalism is a religion. It’s that environmentalism is motivated by the same basic need in mankind to understand their importance. This makes it attractive, not only to atheists and other kinds of unbelievers, but to anyone finding insufficient explanation for the importance of mankind in their other beliefs.

There’s good reason you see a strong Green presence among the more progressive churches. It’s not that they have abandoned belief in God. It’s that they’ve abandoned those teachings that made mankind seem particularly important in God’s grand scheme of the universe. Modern environmentalism provides that. This has practical importance for its adherents that can be summarized in one word: meaning.

You oughtta read the whole thing.

…whilst blogging one encounters a piece that’s just so full of good stuff, it’s impossible to come up with a meaningful excerpt.

So just go and read the whole thing.

Remember when dissent was the highest civic virtue?

That is, naturally and inevitably, what happens when Republicans are in office.

But dissent an anti-scientific socialist power grab?

Treason!

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

I’m only being mildly hyperbolic when I wonder if we’ll see show trials by 2016, should Obama  win another term.

Swine Flu – subject of the media’s panic du jour – might not be as dangerous as the usual strains of flu that bounce around the country every winter:

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

The H1N1 outbreak (the government is trying to downplay the “Swine” moniker, and “Rosie O’Donnell Flu” hasn’t taken off yet) has killed somewhere between 20 (says the WHO, yesterday) and 100-odd people, mostly in Mexico.  This is compared to the 200,000 people hospitalized and 36,000 a year who die of flu-related causes, according to the CDC.  In other words, in the week that the world has been panicking about this outbreak, 250 people (on average) died of all the other mundane flus, without a single headline.

Not to downplay the potential this flu has to mess things up, and certainly not to downplay the tragedy suffered by the families of those who’ve died in this outbreak.

…Swine Flu is not the big kahuna.  It’s fairly preventable and treatable; it spreads through media that the average person can, with a little conscientious thought, cut down on.

Still, it’s serious now:

“I can confirm the very sad news out of Texas that a child has died of the H1N1 virus,” the CDC’s Dr. Richard Besser said.”As a parent and a pediatrician, my heart goes out to the family.”

He said the child was about 2 years old.

Six of the 64 confirmed swine flu cases in the United States have been reported in Texas, according to the CDC.

Of course, it’s been serious in Mexico for quite some time; the deaths there are no less real (although to the American media, which judging by the Today show is already switching into full-blown panic mode, a life north of the Rio Grande is definitely more newsworthy than one on the other side).

At any rate – stay informed, and don’t sneeze on me.