The Drifting Sea

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‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott


The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".


"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley


Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?


For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston.


Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.


Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.


"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken


Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.


Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.


Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?


Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.


There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)


The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).


The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!


If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd], you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue


I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.


A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.


Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein




Imagine the terror when he woke up to find himself in an indistinct world. His brain no longer functioned properly. Vagueness had settled upon him. Gripped him, almost, as the fog settled around the hedges. The sky was a tumbling grey. What made it worse, more frightening, was that everything around him was indistinct, as if they had suddenly been made out of a different material, or had been displaced slightly in time, so that he was seeing everything out of disconnect with this universe. Muffled echoes. The muffled physical realm. He tried to reach out to touch an object, and nothing was there. He was drowning in some sort of fluid, and nothing was real. Oh, Canibasta, please help me, he cried, and nothing happened, a dead cat bounce, his screams elongated into the silence.

There was the fervent rustling and the impulse to write, and that was it. How clear the world had seemed then, everything poignant, vibrant, crystal clear in its intensity. No shadows here. Every pain a real pain. Every movement a dark cloud. Every hurt a personal anguish. Every escape a blessed relief. They played down at the dead end, away from the house, away from their parents, and he crept forward and said to her: I am real, I am worthy, I want your blessing and absolution. Halleluyah. She's a bum. But no ditty was going to save him. The beach was so real, so concrete, so bright. He couldn't believe how impossible his life had become, how impossible they had become. He cringed in the shadows.

Today is Tambar and a long drive and the kids are going over to their mother's for the first time in months. We were shattered. We were held in low self esteem. The choir was not operating in unison. He admitted mistakes. Old men clustered on the steps. Books lined the shelves and his body blew up to the size of the universe. He began reading the World's Great Books from front to back, cover to cover, he tried to drink in all the world's greats. How complicated they were. Aristophanes. Aristotle. Outside the rustling of the leaves grew louder and louder, more demonic. They hid from their parents. The odd stab of affection was lapped up with greed, but the old people were getting out of control. A terrible sadness locked down over the house.

The budgerigar feather caught in the sunlight, and he was writing about that place, those incidents, that appalling moment in time, all over again. The kookaburra swooped and their much loved budgerigar was gone in a flash. The sun streaked down though the giant gums, down to the mystic floor, the jumping ants, vicious, stinging little things that jumped from the bushes, and bull ants, aggressive giant black ants who reared on their hind legs as you approached, and who's sting hurt beyond measure and lasted for about 20 minutes, as they ran screaming and crying back to the house. There was calomine lotion to ease the sting, its pinky clay clinging to their skin. John F Kennedy was killed. Even out here, in this remote place, the news transfixed them.

Everything was changing out there in the big world, they could feel it. But at the same time it never occurred to them that the world was not all exactly like them, deeply suburban, the family secrets, the games, the things that lay behind closed door, all in the silent green depths. It's sick making. They laughed. Rin Tin Tin ran in the evenings at 5.00, and they ran home to watch it. Television was the brightest part of the day, as good as the Enid Blyton books he was always buried in, and he was utterly captivated. Perhaps that was why they limited their television watching to half an hour today. The doctor grimaced. We parents have a lot to answer for, she said.

What is the solution? What is the way forward? Are we really going to tangle like that? He dropped his daughter to work at Baker's Delight, in Glebe, in the suburb where they should have been living, protecting the inheritance of their great grandfather, who had shorn horses there as a young man. So many things had gone wrong in their lineage. Alcoholism had eaten every thing. The family gene. Oh please be fair, oh let me survive. He did want to stand on his own two feet. He didn't want to be protected any more. Salvage salvation. Find comfort. Curl about the children. Oh very very humble sir, as his grandfather placed the piece of cardboard over his drink to keep it fresh. Summer was coming to a hotel near you. The heat was incredible.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2008/09/melting-melting.html

Greenie Watch:

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Melting, Melting ... Well, Not Exactly

Predictions of an ice-free Arctic prove to be just a lot of hot air

With the "meltdown" on Wall Street, it looks like global warming is striking the financial markets. Don't laugh. It must have gone somewhere because it's not doing as the left and the media had warned. Just a few months ago, supposedly responsible journalists were telling us that the Arctic could be ice free this summer because of the dreaded realties of warming.

There are 1.74 million reasons why that didn't happen. That's how many square miles of ice are still standing after Arctic ice hit its low point for the season.

On July 28, NBC's Anne Thompson was the one on ice patrol. "But this summer, some scientists say that ice could retreat so dramatically that open water covers the North Pole, so much so that you could sail across it." She's probably right. You could sail across it - in a sleigh.

A Sept. 16 National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) report said ice loss was less than in 2007. "On Sept. 12, 2008, sea ice extent dropped to 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest point of the year, as sea has now begun its annual cycle of growth in response to autumn cooling," according to the organization.

It's a far cry from how "Today" host Lester Holt described the story. He called it "surprising and, frankly, alarming news from the scientific community, a new report that says the North Pole could soon be ice-free."

To put what actually happened in perspective, there are only a handful of nations larger than the ice at its low point. It's more than twice as large as Mexico and about 10 times larger than Iraq. That's a pretty big error. One journalists are almost guaranteed to repeat until they get the facts they want.

Shortly after Thompson's report, on July 30, ABC weatherman Sam Champion repeated the warning about Arctic ice. He scared the "Good Morning America" audience that Arctic ice loss was at an all-time rate. "Every summer we're on a record pace for losing it last summer and this summer we're at the exact same pace."

Except that isn't accurate either. The final total for 2008 was 9.4% more than the record-setting 2007 minimum. The left will claim it's still part of a trend, but they don't know either. We've only been tracking satellite imagery of the Arctic since 1979 - not a huge amount of time given the age of the planet.

Is it any wonder that Americans are tuning out the entire global warming agenda? According to Gallup, the environment/global warming ranked dead last on a 22-category list of "most important reasons why you would vote for a preferred candidate."

Last. Behind international affairs, behind healthcare reform or even education. None of those issues matter to voters this election. And every one of them scored higher with voters than global warming.

Remember Al Gore's much ballyhooed We Campaign to bully Americans into backing climate change legislation? Politico dubbed it a "$300 million, bipartisan campaign to try to push climate change higher on the nation's political agenda." It debuted with fancy ads featuring Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton or Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi together declaring their abiding love for the global warming agenda. And it's been a miserable flop. The We Campaign ran smack dab into harsh fiscal realities of a declining stock market. It's had a wee impact.

Maybe that's because people have begun to tune out the green propaganda as journalists link everything from allergies to bigger storms to climate change. Even global warming hype machine Time magazine doesn't embrace all of the silly claims any more.

A recent Time issue explained that increased storm impact is manmade, just not the way Al Gore and his disciples would claim. "But there is another inconvenient truth out there: We are getting more vulnerable to weather mostly because of where we live, not just how we live," wrote Time.

Last year's cold winter has raised even more concerns that global warming advocates might be way off in their predictions. Investor's Business Daily reported that August was "extraordinary." "For the first time in nearly 100 years, the sun created no visible spots. The last time that happened: June 1913." Based on sunspot history, the sun may be "entering a down cycle."

Even the Old Farmer's Almanac is raising questions about a new "big chill" or little ice. "The next 20 years, it's going to be colder," Sarah Perreault, of the Old Farmer's Almanac, told Reuters. Maybe we'd be better off paying attention to old farmers instead of old media.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-09-27-voa22.cfm

No Clear Winner in US Presidential Debate
By Kent Klein
Washington
27 September 2008

Both U.S. presidential candidates were claiming victory following the first of three scheduled debates. Commentators, analysts and bloggers appeared split on who may have gained an advantage from Friday's debate. Many believe that both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama performed well, but neither walked away the clear winner. VOA's Kent Klein reports from Washington.

Experts seem to agree that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain made any serious mistakes. NBC political analyst Chuck Todd said on Saturday's Today show he thinks it was a good night for both candidates.

"They were both very good at doing what they do well, Obama being a little more direct than he usually is, but still expansive, and the format helped him there, McCain being very direct, showing a lot of energy," he said.

Bruce Miroff, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Albany, says John McCain was particularly comfortable in the foreign policy portion of the debate.

"McCain had had a rocky two weeks on the economy. He was back on his ground of foreign policy, and he probably reassured his supporters that he was still in command of his campaign," he said.

On the other hand, Miroff says Barack Obama held his own with McCain on foreign policy.


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24408166-5013871,00.html

Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent | September 27, 2008

JULIA Gillard has tried marijuana. But it was a long time ago. And she didn't like the drug.

The Acting Prime Minister revealed her university experimentation yesterday after Malcolm Turnbull admitted on Thursday night he had tried marijuana, but now believed it was a mistake.

In what has become a stock question for aspiring politicians, the Opposition Leader, appearing on ABC television, admitted to having tried cannabis as a young man.

"Yes, I've smoked pot," Mr Turnbull told the ABC's Q&A television program. "There you go. It is a serious issue. It was a mistake to do so."

Ms Gillard, interviewed on ABC radio, joined the confession brigade yesterday. "At university," she said. "Tried it, didn't like it.

"I think many Australian adults would be able to make the same statement, so I don't think it matters one way or the other."

Asked whether it was important whether Mr Turnbull had smoked pot, Ms Gillard said it did not matter in any shape or form.

Mr Turnbull's admission could bring down the curtain on the ritual questioning of politicians over the issue, and signal the passing of the baton to a new generation.

While political leaders of the generation of former prime minister John Howard might have been scandalised if they had encountered illicit drugs, even during their university days, Mr Turnbull and Ms Gillard seemed to indicate the presence of cannabis was commonplace when they were young, as highlighted by Ms Gillard's statement that most Australian adults would have encountered the drug.

Cabinet members Wayne Swan and Peter Garrett have confessed to having smoked cannabis.

However, Kevin Rudd apparently defies the trend. The Prime Minister told an interviewer last July he had "a unity ticket" with Mr Howard.

"Let me answer that directly in case you think I'm ducking, weaving - never, never, never," Mr Rudd said.

Jan Copeland, director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre in Sydney, said Mr Turnbull's candour was credible, responsible and not typical of politicians.

Additional reporting: AAP

Their Perpetual Lies

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With debt of a magnitude few of us can readily conceive, with trade deficits of enormous proportions, with a gutted manufacturing sector and the ruthless reduction of the community of skilled factory workers, with a corporate culture that has lost its traditional dedication to real investment, productivity and production in favour of "ownership" and speculative enterprise, the United States appears to be moving rapidly along the road to ruin. The most forbidding of economic crises - with a variety of themes, aspects and complexities - seems to threaten just a short distance down that road from where we are now. If and when it arrives, a turmoil and misery to put the Great Depression of the 1930s to shame could afflict the American economy and the American people - and persist perhaps for a decade or more.
James Cumes, America's Suicidal State Craft.



And collapsed, and seen for the future, old fashioned socialists running the country, his own darkness and dysfunction long forgotten as a bunch of snivelling self-serving idiots ran the country into the ground. More tax, yet more and more tax. Not only did they sell the farm, they obliterated what was left of the economy. Australia became a country that didn't make anything, that didn't have a normal manufacturing base, that had been led by fools and dissed for the toss, the population taken for fools. Oh no, don't let this happen, ancient souls cried, but it was too late, it was already happening.

Kevin Rudd has been to the socialist citadel, the United Nations, gave a speech which made him look like a high school debating leader struggling with difficult concepts, accepted the applause which was not his due, entered the limousine he had not paid for, ate food supplied by the Australian taxpayer, and took us all for a ride. It was the contempt for the common man that got him. None of these people had worked a real day in their lives. They all wore white ribbons the other day in parliament, queuing up to get on the band wagon and show that they were against domestic violence, that all men were patriarchal brutes, that government statistics showing men are twice as likely to be the victims of violence as women are irrelevant in the face of blind feminist ideology, and peddling more lies as they swim in a soup of self-congratulatory nonsense.

It's sick making, the lot of it. Nothing works. We spend half the day trapped on the M5, and get charged a toll for the privilege. We are shattered and the darkness of a decaying culture wreaks havoc on the land. Oh how could you, how could you, but the Spanish passed laws making it illegal to encourage a woman in a traditional role, given time the Australian government will do the same, when they think of it, and that bustling matriarch he saw that special day, happy, busy, surrounded by children and grandchildren, will become technically illegal. My own grandmothers, who each bought up six kids during the Depression, would likewise become illegal. And all was lost, lost, as the plutocrats and bureaucrats take over, destroying our lives.

They suck every last cent off the populace and wonder why the nation is sinking into despair. Mortgage stress has become the living norm in Western Sydney, and dark days were eating away at the cosy world he was trying to create. He slept like a log, while the cute boy in Pye said something similar, I've got to go and lay a log. Do you mind? Some things I don't need to know. Healthy, happy, in their prime, the flashes of youth were everywhere as a new generation pushed into prominence, unable to imagine the past, unable to think, even superficially, of what was happening and what was about to happen. He needed to go bush. He needed to escape. He was sure there were shadows on the skirting of time, he sought to avoid the consequence.

The financial meltdown in America has made everyone nervous. Australia is protected, Australia is in good shape, Treasurer Wayne Swan declares in blustering, unconvincing tones. It's obvious to almost everyone he has no idea what he is talking about, winging it desperately. Nobody has any money any more. Every move has a cost, GST, parking fines, speeding fines, highway tolls. Rents escalate. The spirits from the 30s, the working class spirits on which the nation was based, are sitting on spectral fences, crowing, warning, watching. There are ways to survive all this. Destroy yourselves, destroy your own prosperity, destroy the economy, and we will all be bombed back to the dark ages.

Spectral in their lunacy, the ghosts of beggars and unemployed men, the tramps who walked the country looking for work, all they sought was the decency of labour and the comfort of a full belly, while the self congratulatory socialists, abusive to their core, swanned around in their government limousines and government jets, Rudd listing his points, one, two, three, asking himself questions, explaining, explaining, over-exposed, his massive ego needing to be constantly fed. He's still standing up in the polls, amazingly, the population is slow to forgive the conservatives their sins, their own socialist welfare policies, their own big taxing ways. The old saying: they're each as bad as the other, came true. There is nowhere to turn. No one in power has a shed of decency. They are all compromised, all dishonest, all divorced from a day's work for a day's pay; and in the end we will all pay for their preening self-aggrandisement, their self-serving flattering, their perpetual lies. Have you no heart, no conscience, no perception? Apparently not.



THE BIGGER STORY:

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

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Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Congress Fiddled With Warming While Earth Cooled
By Marc Sheppard
Last week Democrats tried to kill the economy in the name of solving a problem that doesn't exist. Republicans should hang this bill around their necks in every district where an incumbent voted for the woefully misnamed and deservedly DOA Climate Security Act, technically S.3036.

Asking Americans to pony up even more at the pump with already record gasoline prices creeping higher almost daily seems offensive enough. But compelling such burden under the guise of moral imperative to curb global warming at a time when the planet is actually cooling rings downright obscene.

And that’s why last week’s cavalcade of Senators opposing the Act -- which would have directed the EPA to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases -- entirely on economic grounds was so confounding.


Don't get me wrong -- the fiscal arguments against the bill's draconian business regulations were inexorable -- its massive consequent spike in energy costs would be nothing short of ruinous to the nation. An April EPA analysis of the bill estimated a 53 cents per gallon increase in the price of gasoline and a 44% jump in electricity costs by 2030 should it become law. Even those figures precariously assumed a 150% increase in nuclear and "significant use of biomass" for electricity generation; otherwise costs will be "significantly higher." Add a projected net loss of almost a trillion dollars in GDP by that very same year and this blatantly socialistic power-grab attempt deserved the pauper's funeral it received on financial grounds alone.

That's without even considering that there's no proof whatsoever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction.

With Americans struggling to keep food on the table in lighted rooms of solvent homes as soaring energy costs drive prices painfully northward across the board, a bill that would hemorrhage thousands of additional dollars from each family's survival-chest annually would seem inopportune at best. Indeed, this public display of politicians debating climate science in terms of macroeconomics, while betraying a comprehension of neither by a disturbing majority within their ranks, was a wonder to behold in these truly trying times.

Green dreams were peddled. Imagine the insolence of countering the economic-suicide predicted from arbitrary and inherently unmonitorable CO2 limits with unfounded promises of some imaginary "green job" boom. Or basing short-term impact projections on the advent of renewable energy "technological advances," naively citing alternately the Apollo Mission and Manhattan Project as prognosticators of success's inevitability. And amid all these fantasies, legislating likewise non-existent Carbon capture and sequestration technology shackles upon the only energy source realistically capable of providing the nation's electricity for decades to come: Coal.

Particularly given no proof whatsoever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction.

It's no secret how much liberals covet European models for just about everything. Yet, Europe's even less intrusive attempts at cap-and-trade have failed miserably, wreaking havoc upon economies with no significant decrease in atmospheric carbon levels. Britain's efforts to legislate carbon limits have sparked trucker and taxi-driver strikes and protests and even threaten Labor's majority. In fact, climate legislation across the pond has failed so miserably that a new poll found "more than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change."

Yet, despite all the consumer misery endured, CO2 levels in Great Britain still increased by 3.39% between Kyoto ratification in 1997 and 2004. True, the global average was 18.05%, but the United States, whose refusal to ratify allowed continued economic growth, managed a mere 6.57% increase. Compare that to other Kyoto signers like Japan (10.61%), Russia (15.61%) or Italy (15.53%). In fact, lib-beloved France, with all its Carbon pontification, barely beat the US (6.21%), despite deriving the majority of its electricity from carbon-neutral nuclear plants.

S.3036 ostensibly gambled on non-existent technology to accomplish essentially nothing at inescapably catastrophic costs.

The Silence of the Shams

GOP failure to challenge the act's underlying premise of man's influence on climate not only circumvented the strongest case against it, but also set perilous precedent by implying acceptance of the unaccepted in the halls of congress. Such oblique capitulation throughout the MSM, the leftie blogosphere and pop culture has already handed the alarmists a victory of sorts. And a Senate floor debate tacitly based upon the junk which is the Democrats' science can only serve to further dye the fraudulent claim of "consensus" into the ever docile fabric of public psyche.

Consequently, from the outset of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 debate, the greenie claim that the global warming "debate has ended" appeared as though a foregone conclusion. And everyone from Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to John Warner (R-VA) to Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was thus handed the pulpit from which to preach that we have no choice but to act now regardless of the economic fallout involved -- to do otherwise would be downright immoral.

During last week's Democrat radio address Boxer waxed Goraclesque:

"There are some in the Senate who insist that global warming is nothing more than science fiction. These are the same kind of voices who said that the world was flat, cigarettes were safe, cars didn't need air bags -- long after the rest of us knew the truth."


And with this shifty alarmist sleight-of-tongue (intentionally omitting the "anthropogenic" prefix), the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works chair set the tone for debate. Not whether or not mankind's Carbon footprint stinks, but rather what steps are necessary to assuage its feculence.

A June 2nd piece at WaPo lamenting the Senate's probable failure to pass S.3036 (for now) further exemplified the left's disregard for the science by stating that:

"The world has clamored for U.S. leadership on climate change. Yet for seven years the Bush administration denied and dithered while the planet warmed." [emphasis added]


An interesting accusation, particularly considering that the planet stopped warming 2 years before Bush took the oath in 2001, has been cooling since 2002 and that this year's was the fourth coldest May since 1979.

That's right -- the University of Alabama, Huntsville just published its satellite-derived temperature anomalies for May. The figures depict a global temperature drop of 0.195°C between April and May, and a drop of 0.379°C since May of last year. Anthony Watts, one of myriad scientists attributing recent cooling (and global temperature anomalies overall) to the activity of that yellow dwarf star at the center of our solar system and other historically correlative natural forces, notes that: [emphasis in original]

"Even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon ‘global warming signal' of the last 100 years."


Please consider those words carefully.

And also that, as previously noted, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently confirmed that an impending phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years.

So amid all the dreadful economics, the Democrats were actually proposing the single largest government intrusion into the nation's economy since WWII rationing in order to stop something that stopped almost 10 years ago. And which, despite continually rising atmospheric CO2 levels, exhibits no signs of restarting.

A socialistic solution in search of a problem if ever there were one.

Das Klima Kapital

Have I mentioned that there's no proof whatever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction?

In last Tuesday's NRO, Lawrence Solomon reminded us that Lieberman-Warner is based primarily upon the premise that there exists "scientific consensus on [manmade] global warming." And that this over-talked talking point is based largely upon the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's headline of "2500 Scientific Expert Reviewers."

Even if true, why then does Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's petition against global warming alarmism continue to add signatures to its over 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 with PhDs? Just who are the UN's "expert reviewers" whose opinions have been elevated to the realm of "indisputable?"

Solomon contacted the Secretariat of the IPCC to learn the names of these 2,500 scientists and just what exactly they endorsed. Writes Solomon:

"I planned to canvas them to determine their precise views. The answer that came back from the Secretariat informed me that the names were not public, so I would not be able to survey them, and that the scientists were merely reviewers. The 2,500 had not endorsed the conclusions of the report and, in fact, the IPCC had not claimed that they did. Journalists had jumped to the conclusion that the scientists the IPCC had touted were endorsers and the IPCC never saw fit to correct the record. There is no consensus of 2,500 scientist-endorsers. Moreover, many of those 2,500 reviewers turned thumbs down on the studies that they reviewed - I know this from my own interviews with them, conducted in the course of writing a book about scientists who dispute the conventional wisdom on climate change."


So why champion a bill that gambled on non-existent technology to accomplish essentially nothing at inescapably catastrophic costs to solve a non-problem that no one has the slightest idea how to solve anyway?

Addressing the National Press Club last month, Czech President Vaclav Klaus described the government control over business afforded by cap-and-trade as "something which resembles very much the dreams of communist central planners." And while Lieberman-Warner, which would have extracted trillions of dollars from the economy by selling greenhouse gas credits to American industry, already fit that bill, the so-called Boxer Substitute Amendment would bring a smile to the face of comrade Marx himself. Responding to claims that cap-and-trade would harm poorest Americans the most, Boxer's was a typical liberal fix that "sets aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs."

Translation - control the nation's commerce while redistributing its profits.

In 1867, Karl Marx argued that capitalism's cycle of labor exploitation could not endlessly sustain itself and would ultimately be its doom. Modern greenies insist that capitalism's cycle of environmental exploitation will not endlessly sustain itself and will ultimately be not only its doom - but the entire planet's.

Cap-and-trade thus represents the perfect liberal synergy of environmentalism and socialism.

With both energy costs and atmospheric carbon levels on the rise while global temperatures fall, one might expect prudent policymakers to adopt a watch-and-wait philosophy over the next 10 years or so. But the envirosocialists are instead feeling the heat to enact their green-red social reforms before the "consensus" lie is exposed -- and the public's hypochondriacal fever cools.

All the more reason why Republican senators should have scooped up handfuls of nascent practical science and with it buried the decaying piles of junk science that shelter the counterfeit arguments coming from the other side of the aisle. And Friday's defeat of S.3036 doesn't change that imperative one iota.

Yes, having failed to muster the 60 votes (48-36) necessary to overcome a GOP filibuster and move to final consideration, Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to pull the bill from the floor. But with both Presidential nominees supporting cap-and-trade and likely Democrat gains in both houses, this insidious scheme may smell funny, but it's by no means dead. Especially with a majority of the citizenry reading headlines the likes of Republican lawmakers block US climate bill still of the mind that their carbon-spewing lifestyles somehow threaten the world of their descendancy.

So when next the battle wages, government topography, public hysteria and lower energy costs might coalesce to favor the alarmists' scare tactics over the economic realities.

That's why then -- as now and before - disputing and debunking the sham science will be key to curing this greenhouse gas dementia once and for all.

Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.



Egg and bacon bush, coastal area, Sydney, Australia.

Crying For Their Own Lost Souls

*



There are the women with their shopping bags and the men with their cardboard boxes, hauling their possessions from one place to the next, forever on the move, as if it mattered where they were. There is the man wrapped in the American flag. There is the woman with a Halloween mask on her face. There is the man in a ravaged overcoat, his shoes wrapped in rags, carrying a perfectly pressed white shirt on a hanger - still sheathed in a dry-cleaner's plastic. There is the man in a business suit with bare feet and a football helmet on his head. There is the woman whose clothes are covered from head to toe with Presidential campaign buttons. There is the man who walks with his face in his hands, weeping hysterically and saying over and over again: "No, no, no. He's dead. He's not dead. No, no, no. He's dead. He's not dead."

Paul Auster, The City of Glass.



Crying out, confused, exultant and despairing all in one, they looked at the shadows and barked, with a baby coming they were even more conscious than usual of the dangers surrounding them. At 3am, as a 16-year-old, he would stumble into the city's only 24 hour coffee shop, Una's at the Cross, and if not exactly like clockwork, then regularly enough to be well known there. He would try to sober up with coffee and icecream, the only thing that he could keep down. They were the days of flagrant dissolution, before he saw the real results, the human garbage that frothed in the cracks, whining, degenerate, self-obsessed thieves who'd rip you off soon as look at you; with that stale unwashed smell permeating everything, all lost, nothing to gain, rotten teeth, besmirched attitudes, a blurry haze of something that might have been.

Some days he couldn't believe that he used to find these people interesting; that he would see a drunk in the gutter and envy them because they could still drink, clouded ouzo, how was he to know where it all led. Oh sympathy. Oh learned compassion. Well read, erudite, creative, fabulously out of it; the shifts in perception were slow across decades, and now he barely had the patience to listen to them, like a burnt out drug and alcohol counsellor who no longer cared about his clients, who had been burnt by their diseased lower order functioning, their complete lack of morals, their dangerous anger and their moaning self indulgence.

Go get a job, he thought, and sometimes said, leave us alone, get yourself together, stop spying on the rest of us, sucking out everything you can for nothing because you can't be bothered to work. They moan and they moan. Everything is everybody else's fault, the government, the capitalists, the country and the culture. Itself, in themselves, these people were nothing but living ruins. They compensated for their own dysfunction with a haphazard veneer of functionality, or by clubbing together with their own kind, so that everyone they knew was the same as them, unemployed, unemployable, living in housing commission flats, with no ambitions, no dreams, their days occupied with the gossip and misadventures of their haphazard clique.

There was always a fight about something, someone had ripped somebody off, the gear wasn't as good as it used to be, back in the 70s, back in the 80s, back in the 90s. Was he using then? That was the year he lost the house, perhaps, he said, and they laughed that bitter, sad laugh of people who had dissolved themselves so often there was almost nothing left, of people who knew too well the depths they could sink to when the monster addiction took over, gripping their entrails, occupying every thought of every day, the sickness rampant, the flashes of beauty, of absolute joy, of divine relief, becoming sparcer and sparcer.

He met a classic English junky in Calcutta, and every night they would spend together, roaring around town clinging to be back of his motor bike, watching him buy grass at the cafes in the shadow of the famous Hawora Bridge, the sea of people having subsided in the early hours. This communion, these depths of communication, these wonderful moments they shared in dingy apartments and odd little rooms he had carved for himself in the slums, these infinitely discrete shadows and fluttering moans and sympathy for each other, we'll be friends forever, until we die, which could easily be tomorrow. He was running out of money. They were always running out of money. Everything they had struggled for vanished overnight.

With the children young, he tried to do the right thing, resist the tide, look under the camera images, the surface of the world, seek harder and deeper for a more eternal truth, to create masterpieces and become, yours truly, the architect of dreams. But it always came back to dingy scenes in dingy rooms, westerners shooting up, the chaos of India stretching in infinite moments all around them, to every side, the pool of complicity, of God consciousness, of absolute and unique pleasure, spreading out from their locked and bolted room, the flash of a policeman's uniform in the street outside, the depth of their understanding, their love for each other.

These were the things he had once thought, that these people were the greatest adventurers, the courageous and adventuring souls who made the world a better place, who fulfilled their intimacy and their capacity, their potential for greatness, who, in short, were the artists of tomorrow, the transfiguring voices which would make the world a better place, their beauty, their insights, their clairvoyance splashing with great effect into the mainstream culture, with money and fame and material rewards coming their way as the natural reward for their creativity, their cunning, their hard work and their bravery. Instead they became human wreckage, pieces of rubbish frothing on park benches, crying for their own lost souls and the lives they could have lived.

We could have been someone, we could have been great. And all they wanted to know was: have you got any money, do you know where can you score? Will you shout me, help me out, I'd do anything for you, you know that.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/world/asia/26melamine.html?ref=world

China’s Milk Scandal Now Seen as Risk in Europe

European Union regulators on Thursday ordered rigorous testing of imports containing at least 15 percent milk powder after concluding that tainted milk powder from China may well be circulating in Europe and putting children at risk.

The action, announced by the European Food Safety Agency and the European Commission, significantly expands the potential geographic reach of a milk adulteration scandal in China to now include a range of foods sold around the world. The Europeans said cookies, toffees and chocolates are the major concerns.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund also expressed concern on Thursday about the Chinese milk contamination and the implications for other foods. In the United States, some consumer groups called on the Food and Drug Administration to restrict imports of foods that may contain suspected dairy ingredients from China.

Milk products in China contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine have sickened more than 50,000 young children in recent weeks.

While it is illegal to import dairy products and baby formula from China into the European Union, European nations import many processed foods containing milk powder manufactured outside of Europe. Such products could contain milk powder originating in China.

While countries throughout Asia have already pulled Chinese dairy products from supermarket shelves as a precaution, it is now clear that the danger could go beyond milk itself. In 2007, the European Union imported from China about 19,500 tons of confectionary products, such as pastry, cake and biscuits and about 1,250 tons of chocolate and other food preparations containing cocoa.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-09-25-voa44.cfm

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are taking a rare break from the campaign trail to join President Bush and congressional leaders at the White House for a meeting on the U.S. financial crisis. McCain and Obama are scheduled for their first debate Friday, but that event is now in doubt. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.

Senator McCain said he is confident Congress and the Bush administration can agree on a financial bailout plan within the next few days.

But McCain stood by his decision to suspend his presidential campaign and a call to delay Friday's first presidential debate at the University of Mississippi.

"A great deal is being asked of the American people, and great care must be taken to ensure their protection," he said. "As most of you know, I am an old Navy pilot and I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck. That is the situation in Washington at this very hour when the whole future of the American economy is in danger. I cannot carry on a campaign as though this dangerous situation had not occurred or as though a solution were at hand, which it clearly is not."

Obama echoed McCain's call for swift congressional action on a bailout plan that includes safeguards for taxpayers and homeowners.

"It is outrageous that we find ourselves in a situation where taxpayers must bear the burden and the risk for greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington," he said. "But we also know that failure to act would have grave consequences for jobs, for savings and retirement for the American people."

Obama and McCain also want to prevent Wall Street executives responsible for the financial crisis from benefiting from the bailout plan.

But Obama also made it clear that he intends to attend Friday's scheduled presidential debate in Mississippi.

"Our election is in 40 days, our economy is in crisis and our nation is fighting two wars abroad," he said. "The American people, I believe, deserve to hear directly from myself and Senator McCain about how we intend to lead our country. The times are too serious to put our campaigns on hold or to ignore the full range of issues that the next president will face."

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_A_Peak_at_Google_Android_Phones_Goodies_24864.html

A Peak at Google Android Phone’s Goodies

Google’s new smartphone called the Dream is scheduled to be unveiled on September 23, followed by the gadget’s release on the market later on in October.

So far, the company has been fairly secretive about the device’s features, leaving everybody to wonder how the Android phone would outrun its main competitor, Apple Incorporated’s iPhone.

Nevertheless, recently leaked photos and videos have added some important pieces to the puzzle, offering quite a clear picture of what the Dream has in store for consumers. Fitted with a physical keyboard that slides from underneath the touchscreen, the smartphone enables users to run various apps simultaneously, allowing the latter to both view each other’s data and share information between them. This feature could pose a real threat to Apple’s product, since the latest update for the iPhone (the 2.1 one) has brought some security upgrades to the gadget, including a feature that prevents applications from viewing each other’s data.

Rumor has it that the Dream will also let users cut and paste text in emails, another feature that the iPhone lacks.

Moreover, the Android Market apps will be free of charge, as opposed to Apple’s ones and they are said to include BreadCrumbz, a picture-based navigation tool that focuses on user-created routes and TuneWiki, a music player that allows users to synchronize lyrics to a song’s video.

Google’s the Dream will be the first smartphone to run on the Android operating system, a software platform for mobile devices that was developed by the Open Handset Alliance, which is a consortium of 34 software, hardware and telecom companies.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24403901-662,00.html

AUSTRALIAN households have been hit so hard this year that their financial gains of the past three years have been wiped out, a Reserve Bank report has found.

Despite missing out on the worst of the global financial meltdown, householders are still going backwards.

A combination of falling house prices, the plunging sharemarket and high inflation was to blame, the Reserve's Financial Stability Review concluded.

It found the financial downturn in the first half of this year had cut household net worth so it was back to the level of early 2005, as a ratio of disposable income.

In other grim news, new home sales dropped across the nation last month and were particularly bad in Queensland - down 4.7 per cent on the previous month.

But the Reserve review said consumers in other countries were doing much worse.

It also singled out the Australian banking system for special praise, saying it was "weathering the current difficulties much better than many other financial systems".

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is in the US, has called on the two major US political parties to bury their differences and pass a multibillion-dollar rescue package to avoid total global financial collapse.

In unusually frank comments straying into the internal politics of another country, Mr Rudd emerged from New York talks with World Bank President, Bob Zoellick, to tell reporters there was no time for the US Congress to mess about.

Today Mr Rudd will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and argue the case for the international community to lift its game on climate change.

Back home, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said Mr Rudd should be in Australia managing the economy.

He said the Rudd Government should be condemned for "being out of touch, out of its depth and out of the country".



On the banks of the Parramatta River, western Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Protect Us, Protect Us

*





The Tiger

I am the delightful Paradox.
All the world is my stage.
I set new trails ablaze;
I seek the unattainable,
And try the untried.
I dance to lifes music
In gay abandon.
Come ride with me on my carousel rides.
See the myriad of colors,
The flickering lights.
All hail me the unparalleled performer.

I AM THE TIGER.


The Ox

Mine is the stabilising force
That perpetuates the cycle of life.
I stand immobile against the
Test of adversity,
Resolute and unimpeachable.
I seek to serve integrity,
To bear the burdens of righteousness.
I abide by the laws of nature
Patiently pushing the wheel of Fate.
Thus I shall weave my destiny.

I AM THE OX.

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker




In all the lands of chaos, in the darkness and the light, on narrow paths and beneath the bowers of the forest, that was where we were, automatically writing. Born to a diseased existence, curdled and cuddled in a single lifetime, these mistakes, these terrible mistakes, haunted him beyond all measure. He didn't tip the aiya enough, he knew she was hoping, could sense it, as he handed over the cloth from the market, that money would have been more useful. Here on the edge of existence. Here in the crowded streets of Calcutta. Here, where we sought redemption and found oblivion. This was the answer. You will always be hopeless.

How smartwas that? He needed to be restructured. He was so terribly, terribly sorry. Money would have allowed the aiya to buy things for her six children, to cope a little better in the one room they all shared. You are the most privileged generation in history, someone said, a disembodied computer voice, something straight out of the ether. And it was true. All was before them. Hints were cast out. He was, as always, searching for a solution. A handsome face hid a different world, of soaring depths and chasms opening sickeningly beneath his feet, of crying eagles soaring above the marshes, of their cousins the falcons darting above the plain, of months turning into years, too bad they were too old for children, they would have been perfect.

Then one day she told him it was true; and he stared at her, startled. Surely she was too old. It's true, she laughed, taking in the astonishment in his face, and then burst into tears. I hope it's alright, he said. Deformities had been high, particularly amongst the older parents. It was the first for both of them. One way and another, children had escaped them. Oh so do I, she said, laughing and crying at the same time. He went to hug her. The Hooray Henrys had been quiet for weeks, not one of them on the road. So quiet, so ghostly quiet had the dump become that they thought the far off city must have died. Well it was not that far off, but far enough if you were on foot, 20 kilometres or so. It was a long way for an old man and an old woman, and they decided, beyond words, without any conversation on the subject, that they would not take the risk.

Instead they had been happy to grow old in their slanted little hut against the old church wall, to make themselves comfortable around the makeshift tables. But the baby changed everything. They would need to think things through more clearly, perhaps move to somewhere safer, not as close to the road. But they were caught between the scavengers in the dump and the Hooray Henrys on the highway, and nowhere was safe. In the absence of any traffic, their fire smouldered 24/7. It was one of his primary tasks, keeping the wood up. He felt protective, enormously proud. And then he asked her what he had never dared to ask: how old are you? She looked 60, always had. Forty seven, she said, briefly vain, staring into his face for a reaction. I know, she said ruthfully, I look older.

No, no, you don't, he protested, and it was obvious to them both he was lying. It doesn't matter, she said, I know you will never leave me, not now. He didn't like being told where he was gong to spend the rest of his life, but it was true enough, he would never desert her. It had been true before, it was even truer now. They were channelled into the sub stream, all these thoughts, all these hopes. His heart was swelling with pride. Even so, 47 is pretty old to be having a baby, he said. Yes I know, she said. I have complete faith. But we might have to move from here, she said, echoing his own thoughts. Imagine if one of the Hoorays came here, and took him. They were half formed beasts hiding in the shadows, ready to take their children at any opportunity.

Who were these people talking to them. Why did the ancestors spill down the generations, coming to rest in this humble place? What was the purpose? Why were you masked? All the regret he had felt for oh so long, he knew there was no room for prevarication. All his regrets belonged to another life. It wouldn't have helped him to pour them out. Tiny things, embarrassing things. Excruciating moments blown out of all proportion. Tides of voices reaching to them here. Humanity was not lost. Humanity was far from over; here there would be new life, the sound of children playing, toys. There's a high risk of miscarriage, Molly said. It's not going to happen, he said, it's not going to happen, and stroked her hair. We will descend on you, we will protect you, the wastrels in the air cried out. He had to protect their unborn child. There was danger one every side. He went to sleep with his head full of images, unseen threats, unnamed fears, disembodied voices. Protect us, protect us, he cried out, leaning down at the alter to pray.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24398634-662,00.html

MORE than 1100 immigrants and visitors on long-term visas are arriving each day, figures show.

The net migrant intake in the year to April was a record 200,000 people, an ABS report released yesterday says.

Permanent migrants and those who said they would be staying for more than a year amounted to 430,000 people.

This was balanced by 230,000 permanent and long-term overseas departures, the report, Australian Demographic Statistics March Quarter 2008, said.

The nation's population reached 21.28 million in March, a 1.6 per cent jump on the previous year's. Victoria added 87,600 people to reach a population of 5.27 million.

While Victoria had a big increase in overseas immigration, it experienced a net loss of 2400 people because of interstate movement.

Queensland and Western Australia reaped the most from net interstate migration, gaining 24,300 and 4000 people respectively.

Immigration accounted for 59 per cent of the nation's population increase, while the excess of births over deaths comprised 41 per cent.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2445958320080924

WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will seek to convince the American public in an address to the country at 9 p.m. EDT on Wednesday (0100 GMT on Thursday) that a $700 billion financial rescue plan is needed to shore up the U.S. economy.

The Bush administration and the U.S. Congress have been trying to hammer out an agreement on the proposal and some lawmakers had pressed for Bush to make a televised address to the American public to explain what was at stake.

"There is no doubt that because this is such a massive legislative package, and it would have such critical impact on our economy that the president wants to talk directly to the American people," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Bush will speak for about 12 to 14 minutes from the White House.

"The president believes it is important for the American people to fully understand the depths of the crisis in our financial markets, how that crisis affects them, and the urgent need to agree on the solution," she said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE48N6XT20080924

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke implored Congress to move quickly as the U.S. Congress launched another marathon day of hearings into the Bush Administration's $700 billion financial bailout plan and the state of the U.S. economy.

Bernanke warned on Wednesday that downside risks to the U.S. economy remain "a significant concern" and the Fed was monitoring developments carefully and would act as needed to promote growth.

"Action by Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy," Bernanke said in comments to the Joint Economic Committee.

Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will both be on Capitol Hill for most of the day Wednesday after more than five hours of testimony on Tuesday.

"Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress," Bernanke said.

The most severe U.S. housing slump since the Great Depression has sent foreclosures soaring, saddling the global financial system with a mountain of bad debt that has threatened to choke off the supply of credit.

The Bush administration, supported by the Fed, want to use $700 billion of taxpayer money to purchase bad mortgage debt and other securities from financial institutions.


From a poster.

I Am So Very Very Sorry Sir

*



Benediction

When by decree of the almighty powers,
The Poet walks the world's wearisome sod,
His mother, blasphemous and fearful, cowers,
Clenching her fist against a pitying God:

— "Ah, would whole knots of vipers were my spawn
Rather than this woeful abomination!
Cursed be the sweet swift night and evil dawn
Wherein my womb conceived my expiation!

Since of all women Thou hast chosen me
To be my sorry husband's shame of shames,
Since I may not toss this monstrosity
Like an old billet-doux into the flames,

Thy heavy hatred I shall vomit back
On the damned tool of your malevolence,
Twisting this wretched tree until it crack,
Never to sprout in buds of pestilence!"

Thus she gulps down the froth of her despair,
Nor knowing the eternal paradigms,
Sinks deep into Gehenna to prepare,
Herself, the pyre set for a mother's crimes.

Yet guarded by an unseen Angel's favors,
The outcast child is fired by radiant suns,
In all he eats and all he drinks he savors
Ambrosial gifts and nectared benisons,

He sports with winds, he talks with clouds, he keeps
Singing along the road to Calvary,
While the bright Angel in his traces weeps,
Beholding him as free as birds are free.

All those whom he would love watch him with fear,
Or else, made bold by his serenity,
Wring groans from him that float sweet on the ear
Making him touchstone of their cruelty.

With his due bread and wine, hypocrites, they,
Mix ashes and fat gobs of spittle; grim,
What he has touched, these humbugs cast away,
Deeming it guilty but to follow him.

His wife cries in the market place: "Behold
Since he adores me, I am fair, and fain,
As idols did, and images of old,
To be regilded and adored again.

I shall be drunk with spikenard, incense, myrrh,
With genuflections, viands and wine to see
If, as a glad usurper, I may stir
His heart to pay God's homages to me!

Tired of these impious japes and of their butt,
My strong lithe hand's caress with subtle art
And my sharp nails like harpy claws shall cut
A mortal path straight to his quivering heart.

That heart which flutters like a fledgling bird,
I shall tear, bleeding, from his breast, to pitch
It blandly in the dust without a word
To slake the hunger of my favorite bitch."

To Heaven where he spies a splendent throne,
Serene, the Poet lifts rapt arms; and bright
Luminous thoughts that shine through him alone
Conceal the furious rabble from his sight:

— "Blessèd, O God, who send woe for a cure,
A balm divine for our impurities,
Of essences the noblest and most pure
To school the strong for holy ecstasies!

I know the Poet has his place above
Amid God's saintly hosts and congregations,
Guest at the everlasting banquet of
The Thrones, the Virtues and the Dominations.

Sorrow alone is noble and august,
A force nor earth nor hell shall ever mar,
To weave my mystic crown I know you must
Tax every age and universe that are.

Old Tadmor's vanished gems beyond all price,
Metals unknown, pearls from the richest sea,
Set by Thy holy hand, cannot suffice
To match this dazzling chapter's splendency;

This diadem shall be of sheerest light,
Drawn from the sacred source of primal rays,
Whereof our mortal eyes, however bright,
Serve but as piteous mirrors dull with glaze."

Charles Baudelaire, Benediction.



The mirrors glazed, the dark knights. Before Bangkok there had been the changeover in Rome, arriving just before dawn, heading straight to St Peter's Square. We had bourbon and coffee and watched the dawn break over the world's most famous church; together, suddenly out of Africa, this little band of Australians. He had become quite close to them, his sickness well behind him now. Only they had climbed the Rift Valley together, had seen that Italian church on the cliff's edge, had telescoped into the lives of those villagers, their humble mud houses perched on the lip of the cliff, the narrow goat paths, the children running everywhere. The dust and the dirt and the mewing warmth, their cuddles, their compassion, their affection for each other.

And here they were in Rome downing bourbons and coffees waiting for the next flight, as the night turned to day and the pigeons came to life, flocking in the pink. Which, when they shared these things, the acres of marble, the world's most beautiful church, here at the heart of eternal mysteries, a bunch of Aussies a long way from home. Which made the betrayal even worse. It seemed like a good idea at the time, when he tried to justify the fortnight out of the office swanning around Africa by proposing a feature on the charity after the death of its founder. One of them came into the office several times, and helped him in every way he could, with the history of the group, even with other contacts in the charity world.

There is always, in a world of limited money and limited resources, someone who will bitch about someone else, usually on the record. He hunted them down. He found them. He interviewed them. He took the choicest and most damming of quotes and used them against his host. He wrote it in a neutral way, and buried the controversy, so it was there, in its rightful place, a nagging doubt properly buried, so he could satisfy all parties, they who had been so generous in providing him a free trip to Africa, and his bosses, who wanted a story of doubt and despair riddling an organisation after the death of its founder Fred Hollows, a saint like creature known for curing blind children in the third world.

And creating a charity based on the principle of curing blindness wherever it was found; providing cheap eye operations to people who could not afford it, people who would otherwise spend their lives sightless. Transforming their lives with little money and lots of energy. But the editor, a difficult woman as they often were, wanted to pile all the negatives up front, to stick it up the saints, to raise doubt about a charity which relied solely on public donations. The copy went back and forth between them all day. She kept emphasising the negatives, wanting an attack piece, protecting her place with the editor, uncaring that he had just spent a fortnight with these people she was trying to dish.

He kept rewriting, reorganising, toning it down into a sensibly nuanced discussion about the group's future, and she kept going the other way. Finally, with young children at home, the evening turning into night and the deadline looming, he handed it over and gave up; let her do what she wanted. He would bear the acrimony if he had to. And acrimony there was. They were apoplectic with rage. They felt utterly betrayed. They had been so intimate. They had been to each other's houses. Their children had played together. They had looked after him when he was sick. They had handed out envelopes of Eritrean money for expenses, put them up in hotels, sent a doctor around when he lay moaning.

And now he had betrayed them and he was a dog in the manger. Now their anger rained down upon him and he never received another invitation. What could have been a glorious and fruitful relationship became nothing but bitterness, contempt, embarrassment. He had fought hard to stop the changes, to make it more neutral, less damaging, but they had wanted their angle and they got it. He wrote for good, not evil, that had been his want. He wanted things to be cosy, less damaging, he didn't want to do harm. His precious neutrality was destroyed by an editor, and there was nothing he could do about it. The cold hard print stared out at him in reproach, he could barely even stand to look at it. Came the reproachful phone calls. Came his apologies and attempts to shift blame.

Came the day when he tried to shrug it off as just one of those things, and knew it wasn't. He avoided them for years; and then life happened; they disappeared into the broader fabric of things, wheels turned, personalities vanished or grew old, he swore to do no evil. And he tip toed through the thickets, ashamed at having survived, be true to the story, be honest to the people involved, do the best you can by the situation and then go home, forget it. Guilt will destroy you, compounding guilt, compounding stories, the cloaks of shame. He gave a lecture at the University of Technology, and used it as a case study of the terrible personal compromises journalism sometimes demands. They sat with their mouths open, and then applauded. It was applause he did not deserve. Wrongs continued to haunt him. Some things can never be set right.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2328/218/

Sit tight on climate change
Written by Bill Pyle, Weekly Times Now
Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Garnaut, in his report on the so-called "climate change", is discovering Australia is so tiny in the world global warming religion, we will be better off sitting tight and waiting to see what the rest of the world does.

Whatever we may try, it will make no difference whatsoever in the eyes of the rest of the world.

More importantly, if Australia did implement some of the demands from "green movement devotees", thousands of jobs would be lost. Worse still, the cost of living would go through the roof.

A dairy farm's cost of production will increase by perhaps a third, even if agriculture is left out of the emissions trading scheme.

Farmers will be hit with massive increases in electricity, fuel, transport, etc, plus flow-on from businesses that will have to pay. After all, they have the ability to pass on costs. Farmers do not.

On September 11, Herald Sun business analyst Terry McCrann wrote: "The Garnaut report on climate change. Is it a masterful exercise in Kissingerian realpolitik? One that accepts harsh realities and yet manages to chart a skilful - indeed miracle - path through the climate quicksand?

"Or an exercise in utter futility that is both mindless and dishonest: and yet would impose real and significant costs on all Australians, living and future," he wrote.

The Department of Primary Industries has computer models with several scenarios as to what will happen in the Western District over the next 50 years due to climate change.

It has lead to some highly suspicious suggestions such as that the region will become desert, that the present food bowl of Victoria will fail, and that Gippsland had better lift its game!

The well-known fact about computers is that the results they produce are only as good as the information put in, which is clearly shown by some of these scenarios.

Some simple facts from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology may help us to understand why these scenarios should be questioned.

The average rainfall trend in eastern Australia over the past 107 years has increased. The past 12 years, however, have been below average, but not as low as 1902-03.

It will get back to average rainfall, just as surely as farmers will adopt and cope as they have done over the past 200 years.

Open-minded research scientists studying ship logbooks from the past 350 years have discovered they contain excellent, clear and similarly written information about weather patterns that are establishing grave doubts about many of the so-called "facts" the climate change addicts are hooked on.

If everybody keeps a level head, this situation can be worked through - history proves it can!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24393655-12339,00.html

Spy story triggers police raid on reporter's home

Paul Maley | September 24, 2008

FEDERAL Police yesterday raided the home of a journalist who published a series of stories detailing the intelligence targets of Australia's spy agencies.

AFP agents spent more than five hours searching the house and car of Canberra Times journalist Philip Dorling in the city's inner-north suburb of Braddon.

The raid was understood to be in response to articles in which the former Labor staffer cited secret briefings written for Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.

The articles named China, North and South Korea, and Japan as primary targets for Australian intelligence agencies.

Speaking outside his home yesterday, Dorling told The Australian seven AFP officers had arrived at his home at 8.30am, armed with a search warrant.

"They have been very industrious," Dorling said. "They've been searching the house from top to bottom, literally -- from the ceiling to the garbage."

News of the raid provoked immediate protests from Australia's largest media companies.

In a written statement, Fairfax Media, owner of The Canberra Times, said it was "gravely concerned by this legal assault on one of our journalists for doing his job". "A federal police raid on the home of a journalist cuts to the heart of the operation of a free press, and is unacceptable."

In a statement written on behalf of Australia's Right to Know coalition of print and electronic media, News Limited director of corporate affairs Greg Baxter also condemned the raid.

"The raid in Canberra today, which follows a raid by 16 armed police at The Sunday Times in Perth in May, shows that it's time for governments to stop talking and start enacting laws that will protect whistleblowers and journalists from being hunted down and prosecuted if their information threatens to embarrass governments," Mr Baxter said.

"There is no evidence that national security or public safety is at risk or that this information could lead to a serious crime ... and therefore there are simply no legitimate grounds for today's police raid."

Yesterday was the second time Dorling's house has been raided.

In 2000, when Dorling worked for then shadow foreign spokesman Laurie Brereton, his home was raided after leaks embarrassed the Howard government. The leaks related to warnings apparently received by the government concerning Indonesian militia activities in East Timor and the involvement of the Indonesian military.

Yesterday, Canberra Times editor Peter Fray said the paper stood by Dorling and his reports.

http://news.theage.com.au/world/rudd-begins-meetings-on-financial-crisis-20080924-4mo4.html

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will take part in a series of meetings designed to give him a first-hand account of the scale of the financial meltdown hitting world markets.

Mr Rudd arrived in New York on Monday night for a three-day visit to the United Nations General Assembly, which opened earlier on Tuesday.

He has come in for heavy criticism in Australia for heading to New York when the Australian economy is experiencing its own turmoil.

Mr Rudd will begin the first of a series of meetings with business executives, regulators and other world leaders, aimed at giving him greater insight into how Australia should best handle the flow on effects of the financial crisis.

He will meet executives from Macquarie Bank, Goldman Sachs and UBS Investment Bank before heading into discussions with the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, followed by a meeting with World Bank President Bob Zoellick.

Mr Rudd is also expected to see US President George W Bush at a commemoration of the fallen in Iraq taking place at the UN.



Parramatta River, western Sydney, Australia.