In the middle ages an Anchoress was a woman who lived in a small, sealed room inside a church;she would have visual access to the Sanctuary and to Holy Communion. Usually there was also a small side window at which she could converse with visitors, receive foods, etc. As a shy sort of person who prefers to hang in the background, the persona suits.
Consider this my window. Instead of passing me food, comments will do! I ask only that you be civil, because I do believe that decent people can disagree and still be decent people.
All posts are copyrighted, 2007 The Anchoress. Blog administrator is not responsible for content of comments. Note: All emails are considered fair game for publication, unless you specifically tell me not to quote you or use your name, in which case I am happy to comply.
An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth s atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons.
Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.
Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth s atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time. [ ]
The experimental results lend strong empirical support to the theory proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen that cosmic rays influence Earth s climate through their effect on cloud formation.
The original theory rested on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds.
Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines.
It is known that low-altitude clouds have an overall cooling effect on the Earth s surface. Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature.
The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth s climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth s climate.
Read the whole thing - very interesting stuff. Al Gore won t like it.
A few days ago I wondered (as many do) why, in a three-year witch hunt that dashed the dreams of many to see Karl Rove frog marched out of the White House, of that non-story.
I m kind of wondering the same thing about Colin Powell, now.
It was Richard Armitage, part of Powell s State Department, who accidentally leaked Valerie Plame s name and job to Robert Novak, although by meant to grow pretty much precisely as it did.
It seems Pakistani President Musharraf was given the green light to express some closely held information he had on the strong arm threats by the State Department after 9-11. Contrary to popular opinion, it seems it was the State Department under Powell and Armitage that was rattling the sabers and threatening countries with annihilation - . Were Powell and Armitage running amok at State?
Were they strong arming our allies and pretending to these allies all these threats were coming from Bush? Where they all the while telling Bush they were being diplomatic and the backlash was due to something else? The example set in the Plame fiasco, of hiding their true actions from the WH as they ended up being the true leakers to the media, would indicate it is strongly possible that all the international strife the US has faced was due to heavy handedness by State, while State was not being totally honest with Bush on what was happening at the lower levels.
Good questions. How come no one ever asks Colin Powell about any of this? Shouldn t we?
Given these issues, shouldn t there maybe even be an investigation into how State was run during his tenure? Shouldn t we be looking into why government employees like felt so completely easy with the idea of blowing holes into programs meant to protect America? I mean it all seemed so casually and careless done, as though the idea of serious retribution never occured to anyone.
Perhaps because the retribution never comes? I don t know. Seems like a lot of chickens are coming home to roost, suddenly.
We live in shiveringly interesting times. Don t forget to read the comments in AJ s post. Fascinating.
Vaughn Ververs at Public Eye on the revelation that it was Richard Armitage, and not the big, bad evil nazis of the Bush administration and its leader, Darth Rove, who outted non-cloaked, desk jockeying CIA employee Valerie Plame.
He s quite right that the mainstream press and those mediating intelligences (who gatekeep stories to make sure we get the very best, most accurate news) have chosen on this story, particularly once the leaker was discovered to be a non-Bushie.
An honest and honorable press would talk about this story, though, particularly their role in helping to create it, and to complicate it, and to lawyer-it-up until it became almost impossible to follow.
Chris Matthews, in particular, expectorated and waxed indignant for three years on this story, declaring treason and calling for heads. He needs to answer for that - for the certainty he brought to his pronouncements.
But the press really, really simply wants to walk away from this story.
They want to walk away from the reality that they carried lying Joe Wilson on their shoulders and gave him credibility he did not deserve. They want to walk away from the fact that through all of this not one of them has asked Valerie Plame a single probing question - not about her status at the CIA, not about the forged documents that seemed to have passed through her jurisdiction - not about how she got her Joey sent to Niger to begin with, not about nuthin . Valerie walks away and doesn t get asked a thing.
The only place the story is still being looked at is in the blogosphere, where and keep thinking and asking questions, and they re covering Clarice Feldman s demand for an investigation but as press interest caves, interest elsewhere does too, even on the internet - which is evidence of just how much power the press still weilds over any particular story
So when will “journalists” start acting like journalists instead of political midwives, working with a poisoned rag at the ready, trying to determine which infant story will live or die at birth, how they are to be delivered and fed, and which are to be shunted aside and ignored?
I still can t answer that question. But clearly, the poisoned rag is being employed on anything having to do with looking in the direction of Ms.
Plame.
Like I ve said before, the people pushing the idea of Global Warming :
From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above in the metropolitan Washington, D.C.
, area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. That summer has never been approached, and it s not going to be approached this year.
Between July 19 and Aug.
9 of that year, heat records were set on nine days and they remain unbroken more than three-quarters of a century later.
Jay Gulledge, senior research fellow for science and impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told NBC News on Wednesday that this heat wave and other extreme events we ve seen in recent years are completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming, even though we can t be definitive on any single event.
Michaels acknowledged that global temperatures have been warming slightly for several decades and noted that the surface of the world is a little bit warmer than it was in the 1930s even though temperatures dropped between 1940 and 1975.
Usually, the way the jet stream breaks out is very hot in the East and relatively cool in the West or vice versa, he said. This time around, it looks more like the summers of the 1930s, but he dismissed the idea that the extreme temperatures of that time were caused by man-made global warming since it wasn t around then.
We don t really know anything, we have no conclusive proof, but we have an idea we want to push, so we re using every opportunity to do so even though, really you know we re full of it.
I remember when I was a kid, in the 1960 s dealing with a few days of hundred degree heat in NYC, in August. I remember going to NYC in 1986 with my Elder Son to see the tall ships and it broke 100 degrees. It was SUMMER.
This happens in the summer. . You know how you can have a fortnight long cold snap in winter?
Well???
You can have a couple of really hot weeks in summer, too!
An email from a nail-bitten Global Warming True Believer challenged me to explain why I don t believe in the inevitable terrors of Global Warming. This person wondered how, since I am not a scientist, I am not a sophisticate and I am - gasp - a rightwingnutjob, could I possibly speak credibly on the issue and why don t I believe people like Al Gore and Bill Clinton - after all, they ve never lied to me before, like that .
Well, if you re looking for degrees in Earth Science, then I can t speak credibly on Global Warming. Then again, Al Gore has no degree in Earth Science, either, and he seems to have plenty of credibility on this issue for some, so many being a scientist is not necessary maybe you just have to have a brain and the ability to breathe in and out.
Quite aside from the fact that I rarely if ever give credence to an issue once the press goes orthodox on it (I remember too many headlines growing up - The New Celibacy!
The New Thriftiness! The Coming Ice Age! - to take mass-movements seriously) I have three reasons in particular why I do not buy into the warming hysteria.
1) As Fausta wrote only yesterday, . You can find scientists who say yea and nay. (I suspect, you can probably find more politicians than scientists saying yea.
) As with opinion polls, you can find data to support any theory you want to - which is why 3o years ago, there was all that staggering, scary data about the coming Ice Age. I read parts of Bjorn Lomborg s The Skeptical Environmentalist and found him persuasive, but what I found even more persuasive was the fact that he (a respected scientist) and former media-darling Michael Crichton (author of State of Fear, which dared to take on the enviro orthodoxy) were both dissed and dismissed by their former worshippers, because they took the politically incorrect stand. If a movement has no room for disagreement, it is generally a fragile movement built on a shaky foundation - one that will not allow the stomped foot of dissent.
Such a movement is not credible. And yes, I feel the same way about some of the conservative movements with which I disagree. The truth is, out of 100 scientists, only 19 will tell you Global Warming is real, which is why - that s what you do when all you have is an idea you want to promote - you market it.
2) I possess recent memory and it serves me well. My recent memory can look back at a summer ten years ago wherein the horrific heat was finally broken with an 8 day deluge that had mothers everywhere beating their kids because they couldn t take another day of indoors shenanigans.
That s too recent, you say?
We were already in the clutches of Global Warming ten years ago, but didn t know it? Okay, 15 years ago, I recall Mount Pinatubo erupting and spewing so much ash into the atmosphere that much of the world enjoyed a wonderfully mild summer which means that you can t look at THAT particular year and say, see, the earth is getting warmer because the cool temps of that summer were an anamoly caused by a natural earth science phenomenon there are lots and lots of natural phenomena, btw - the earth is always cooling and heating, but I digress. I can remember back to the 1970 s when I lived in a different state, and my father received newspaperclips from a friend reporting on the sweltering summer heat of NYC, which was killing people.
Thirty years ago not far enough back for you? Auntie Lily recalls people passing out and staggering around with heat stroke in August, 75 years ago. Of course, they wore more clothing, then, but it was hot out.
Whenever you hear an affable TV weather guy say the hottest day since 104 years ago when we reached (whatever) degrees, you have to take a second to realize that - ummmm 104 years ago we had hot weather, then cool then hot again.
3) My third and most emphatic reason for disbelieving all the Global Warming hoo-hah is a simple one that lots of true believers probably won t understand. If the people promoting the hysteria on warming were serious - if the issue were a real one and not simply a political tool, then the hyper-concerned folks would be welcoming and heralding thoughtful environmental programs and helpful policies from any-and-all quarters, even - gasp - from the right.
Even - gaspgasp - from George W. Bush. (You know, the guy who frees oppressed women and is cursed at by the feminists, the guy who keeps an eco-friendly ranch and is and is hated by the enviros.
)
You probably don t know what I am talking about. You probably have no idea that President Bush .
the agreement comprises countries that account for 45% of the world s population and about half the world s economic output and greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, implicated in raising surface temperatures.
More Asian countries may soon join the pact.
Fourth and most important, it takes a pro-growth approach to combating the possibility of global warming in the century ahead. The new Beyond Kyoto agreement focuses on innovative technology as the antidote, not only to carbon-dioxide emissions but also to dirty air and economic deprivation.
The very first statement in the pact is: Development and poverty eradication are urgent and overriding goals internationally.
The Beyond Kyoto pact, by contrast, seeks to address energy, climate change and air pollution issues within a paradigm of economic development. Specifically, the deal will concentrate on the technology that will help China and India, especially, to increase the efficiency of their energy use.
Currently, these countries produce twice as many emissions as the US for each unit of GDP.
A major focus will be clean-coal technology. The US is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with the world s largest supply, and China and Australia are also large producers and users.
The deal also seeks more alternatives to fossil fuels with both low emissions and high efficiency - not just nuclear, wind, even biotechnology and nanotechnology.
Yes, I know - you don t know about it and you don t want to know about it, because you have way too much invested in other narratives. But the fact remains that if Al Gore or Bill Clinton or whoever else is ringing the sky-is-falling alarm bells were serious about Global Warming if they really, actually believed that it was real, that it was, as Clinton says, the most urgent issue of our time, more urgent than terrorism then rather than ignore this program, they d have applauded this effort between co-operating nations.
Instead, the story got sniffed at with disdain, was pronounced some sort of political manuever and then strangled to death from a lack of oxygen. Certain quarters are very good at suffocating stories that don t fit memes.
So, you know if the big boys of Global Warming aren t really taking the issue seriously if they find it so unserious as to allow the issue to be used as a political wedge or a rabble-rousing sound-bite, and that s all well, then I don t have to take it seriously, either.
The Global Warming Hysteria Movement, complete with Media overhype, is not real. The proof is in the politics of it. It is a means to an end.
To what end, I m not sure.
Flopping Aces has - note the media spin by the AP - it s pretty outrageous.
writes that the AP s dishonest spin is so egregious, in fact, that even the has noticed and objected.
Siggy To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.
That s because as Fausta writes again today, in more detail, .
Gateway Pundit .
I m wondering why we should believe a press that will blow off one president s request not to give up national security secrets while all-too-obediently working to give credence to pretty much anything a former president says it should.
Earth warmest in at least 400 years, panel finds
Which begs the question if we weren t driving cars and flying planes and otherwise polluting the earth why was the earth so freaking hot 400 years ago?
How about, Global Warming is Junk Science exploiting on the fact that the earth naturally warms and cools and that Global Warming is being given the big hysteria-push these days because it is going to be used as a means to an end.
Once Bill Clinton - on whose radar terrorism has never blipped - embraces an issue, it is THE issue and he has recently decided (after table-ing the Kyoto treaty which was unanimously rejected by the US Senate, it must be said) but we must always then ask: WHY? What is really behind the Global Warming hysterics that only being pumped up, every day even as the folks doing the pumping are flitting about in their private jets, cooling their 9,000 square foot homes, etc.
It s not about the dubious facts of Global Warming, obviously.
It s about something else.
Oh now it s . Let s see how hysterical we can get.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred pinged back with
Via Julie at comes when you allow your ideology to trump your humanity or your common sense.
IT IS BAD enough that you can be refused medical treatment on the NHS for eating, drinking or smoking too much. Now it seems that you can be denied an operation for protesting too much in support of your religious or political beliefs.
Edward Atkinson, a 75-year-old anti-abortion activist, was jailed recently for 28 days for sending photographs of aborted foetuses to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. That draconian sentence was not deemed punishment enough: the hospital has banned Mr Atkinson from receiving the hip replacement operation he was expecting.
Mr Atkinson sounds like an unpleasant crank, and I am as much in favour of legalised abortion as he is against it.
But his treatment (or the lack of it) is a scandal. This is about admitting a man to hospital, not electing him to Parliament. Even unhip old bigots need replacement hips.
Ruth May, the hospital’s chief executive, claims that the ban is justified because the “offensive” publications he mailed caused “great distress” to her and her staff and thus contravened the NHS policy of “zero tolerance”. Some may already feel that such policies make it seem as if a hospital’s priority is to protect its staff against the patients, rather than protecting patients from illness. This case goes farther, equating the posting of offensive photos with punching a nurse on the nose.
It takes a really fascist mindset to suggest that because one has different views, or takes idiotic action, that they should be denied healthcare. Here we see a situation wherein a man is being treated badly by the same folks who would likely put chocolates on a terrorist s prison pillow because he is the wrong sort of human being, thinking the wrong way.
Please do not write to me suggesting that only liberals are this insane.
I have a few emails, just arrived, which will disprove that notion. The fascist is whoever is trying to shut you up, shut you down, dis-employ you, silence you, cripple you or marginalize you for the crime of daring to fall out of step with the party and the conventional wisdom. Beware of them.
As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government s climate-change plans. This would be entirely consistent with your recent commitment to conduct a review of the Kyoto Protocol. Although many of us made the same suggestion to then-prime ministers Martin and Chretien, neither responded, and, to date, no formal, independent climate-science review has been conducted in Canada.
Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science.
Observational evidence does not support today s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada s climate policies are based.
Even if the climate models were realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most prudent and responsible course of action.
headlines, they are no basis for mature policy
formulation.
The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an emerging science, one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth s climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.
If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.
You ll want to read the whole thing.
H/T via ForNow.
Confederate Yankee - quite rightly, I think - for suggesting that doesn t write her own blog.
Yankee does a fine job blowing the theory out of the water, so I needn t. But as a long form blogger who still manages to rack up the number of daily posts, I m simply wondering if the professor has any idea how addictive the whole form is, and how easy it is to hammer out posts - particularly if you are a short-form blogger like Michelle, who frequently updates.
Hooey and hoo-ha. The professor clearly doesn t have enough to do.
I m taking this story with a grain of salt, and I d advise everyone else to, also, given that there is only one source and I don t know how good that source is.
“Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine,” Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward’s University on Friday.
Not content with their servings thanks to abortion and euthanasia, the Deatheaters are looking up from their feast and demanding more, more, more.
How about serving us up a banquet via the ebola virus?
Sounds demented, I know. Eric Pianka - a world reknowned ecologist got a standing ovation for it, though.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us.
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
[ ]After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We ve got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.
”
The audience laughed when he said, “You know, the bird flu s good, too.” They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, “We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.”
After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?
Pianka replied, I speak to the converted!
Okie on the Lam - in a very long and smart post - says this all sounds like - Rainbow Six, to be precise.
And then there is Rainbow Six — where a collaboration of elite scientists and wealthy benefactors engineer an even more lethal form of the Ebola virus, (with no fall-off of kill rate in succeeding infections), with the sole purpose of killing off the majority of human life on Earth — all except the few hundred thousand that they have chosen to survive, via a closely guarded antidote.
So, perhaps this professor is someone who is merely out of ideas and has stolen one from a novelist in order to give himself the patina of the provocateur? Well, maybe. Maybe he is just a phenomenal crackpot, but he has a legitimate place in a legitimate university and Okie finds that this Pianka has much of the same material on his :
If humans do not control their own population (and we seem unwilling and unable to do so), then other forces will certainly act to control our population.
The four horseman of the apocalypse (conquest, war, famine, and death) are all candidates. Most likely, lethal virulent microbes like HIV and Ebola zaire will set limits on the growth of human populations. HIV, by allowing infected hosts to survive years while they spread the virus and infect new hosts, has already become a pandemic, but it will be years before it decimates the human population.
Hmmmm well, I will take that as confirmation, then, that our primary source - the witness to his speech - is possibly a good one.
Kobayashi Maru is looking at the odd theology behind this idea and relates his concerns.
First, we were treated to a sermon by a substitute pastor that could have passed for an Earth First!
ad. Delivered by an environmental lawyer called to ministry late in life
Gone was any sense that God sent His Son to earth, much less to save people. Gone was any traditional notion of humans having dominion, of being first among created things, or of going forth and multiplying.
Replacing it was a chip-on-the-shoulder twenty-minute lecture (interspersed with laughably silly 1970 s-era hymns I didn t even know existed) emphasizing the importance of opinion polls on global warming, and generally making the point that in the greater scheme of things, humans are no better than lily pads, leeches, or lichens - probably worse because we ve changed the environment.
Nick Schultz noted that the last few weeks have seen a herd run on the Global Warming story. I noted last week that Bill Clinton has suddenly decided he is the voice of the .
Noting that everything Clinton focuses on becomes the obsession of the press, I figure the Global Warming theme is the one on which many sorts of campaigns are going to be run. Masks are coming off - they have been for the last 6 years. This particular mask, however, has been in place for a little while.
A pal of mine, reading this story, tells me that at The Carter Center in Altanta, you can read the entire Global 2000 Report, authored by the Carter Administration. He says if anyone takes the time to read it they will discover ideas that are similar to what we read here, descriptions of useless eaters, discussions about how the surplus population might be eliminated. Pretty interesting.
Seems Carter accepted it as U.S. Policy.
We never do know what is in those multi-volume report type things, do we? We simply accept the 30-second broadcast news summary, or the three paragraph print-news summary. And I m not indicting the press, either.
Who has time to read such a thing?
It is not really surprising to me that a year after John Paul s death spoke eloquently to the world about the value and sanctity of human life, in all of its forms, we are reading this. Deatheaters are insatiable, and they think a major voice of opposition is gone.
How real all of this is, I am still not sure. I am as much a slave to Big Time Professional Journalism as the next, and I d like to see a more credible outlet report on this before dismissing the grain of salt notion.
UPDATE: Apparently ?
It d be nice if humans could learn to manage our population as successively as we ve learned to manage the population of literally every other species on this planet with whom we share. We re very skilled when it comes to killing off deer, snakes, rabbits, and fish for population control. But we re a stupid species when it comes to managing ourselves.
An insightful observation was made during the talk that education should be the key to learning how to take care of the Earth, but the problem is that the educated have fewer children and the uneducated have many children. So eventually, the uneducated will take over the Earth. It may have already happened.
Hmmmm educated doesn t really mean intelligent, does it? Many seem to think it does.
Okie has an that is pretty interesting, too.
Nick Schultz does a good job of about global warming. The past few weeks we ve seen a stepping up of hysterical rhetoric, complete with Bill Clinton on about the whole global warming revolution Eek.
But first, the alarm bells.
Consider:
* This week Time magazine has a special report on global warming with the cover blaring Be Worried. Be Very Worried.
* Australian alarmist Tim Flannery has a new doomsday book out The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What I t Means for Life on Earth.
* The Washington Post recently featured a front page article about melting ice in Antarctica.
* ABCNews recently attacked skeptic scientists such as the University of Virginia s Pat Michaels.
* A cover story in the New Republic this month attacked the popular writer Michael Crichton for his skeptical views on catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
* The New Yorker s Elizabeth Kolbert recently published a book with the telling title Field Notes From a Catastrophe.
* And the Advertising Council and Environmental Defense have just launched the first public awareness campaign on global warming.
Recall that last September s Clinton Global Initiative (part of several weeks of focus) leered upon everything BUT terrorism, which has never been on his radar.
He s clearly separate and distinct from his wife s White House run and global warming hysteria is going to play a big part in it - hence the press is doing its part to beef up the panic.
Some of this rhetoric is troubling, but such rhetoric is always alarmist, as Schultz notes:
Time is right about scientists issuing warnings for decades. It just hasn t always been about global warming.
Three decades ago, as Rich Karlgaard of Forbes reminds us this week, Newsweek magazine was warning not about global warming, but about global cooling. And the rhetoric was just as alarmist then. According to Newsweek at the time, There are ominous signs that the Earth s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.
But just because scientists and their acolytes in the media were badly wrong a mere thirty years ago, doesn t mean they are wrong today. It doesn t mean they are right, but let s stipulate that the planet is warming and greenhouse gases due to man s activities have some effect. What then should we do?
Well, I think one thing we need to do is perhaps take a look at . Never heard of it? Surprise, surprise if a president with an R after his name has an environmental initiative, and and ex-president with a D after his name has a competeing idea, which one is credible?
If you couldn t answer that, you go sit in the corner, right now.
That the wrong president s plan is doesn t matter. Wrong president.
Not credible.
I m not buying the doom and gloom codswallop. Not when there are alternative initiatives that are being ignored.
You see, it s one thing if all the the world is going to end because of global warming hoo-ha is all that is out there it s quite another thing when other ideas are out there, other solutions to the global warming crisis are out there, but they re being ignored by the very people who are supposed to be so very, very concerned about it all.
If you re really concerned about global warming, you work with everyone in power to find solutions and you don t simply ignore alternatives because they come from the wrong side. If that IS what you do then you re full of hothouse gasses yourself on the whole issue.
Or maybe there IS no issue. Maybe this is just what the planet does, sometimes.
casts a satirical eye.
The boy had to bring in to school an article about environmentalism - it could be about anything - about global warming or endagered species, or the Kyoto protocols, anything. They had to read the piece and write up a commentary on it. Extra credit.
In a surprise move that caught Europe s smug moralists and the environmental movement s noisy extremists flatfooted, the United States announced in Vientiane, Laos, last week that it was joining five other nations - China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia in a new pact that offers a refreshing and effective alternative route to tackling the problem of climate change.
While given short shrift by the puzzled media, this is a big deal, in many ways.
First, it breaks the climate-change deadlock.
This is the agreement that responsible scientists and public officials have been seeking since the failure of the Kyoto Protocol became evident at the global warming conclave in Delhi two years ago. Call it Beyond Kyoto - Way Beyond Kyoto.
Second, the new deal was negotiated and settled without the involvement of the United Nations or the European Union - a clear message from the United States that multilateralism does not have a single definition the agreement - called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate was kept secret by President Bush from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an uncompromising champion of Kyoto, during last month s G8 meeting in Scotland.
Third, the agreement comprises countries that account for 45% of the world s population and about half the world s economic output and greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, implicated in raising surface temperatures .
Fourth and most important, it takes a pro-growth approach to combating the possibility of global warming in the century ahead. The new Beyond Kyoto agreement focuses on innovative technology as the antidote, not only to carbon-dioxide emissions but also to dirty air and economic deprivation
Never heard about all this, I bet?
Neither had Buster s teacher, who is pretty well-informed. It s another one of those stories that just .
His fellow students were all surprised, as well.
They d not heard about it, but you know Bush is a moron and everything he does is bad and stupid and illegal and power-grabbing was the general consensus, because that s basically all the kids could find in their own reading.
Buster came home and said, Hey, Ma! (These days EVERY sentence begins with hey, which is starting to annoy me a little ) do you remember earlier this year, wasn t there some reason why Jon Stewart and everyone was saying, maybe Bush was right after all?
What was that about, again?
By jove the kid was right. I d forgotten all about it, myself - I could remember reading (or seeing a tape) of Stewart looking panicked and saying the words, but I couldn t remember what the issue was about.
Turns out Stewart -I can t help it, I have a soft spot for him (I like olive skinned men and Jewish men what can I say?) - was fretting because the first Iraqi election had been :
I ve watched this thing unfold from the start, and, and, here s the great fear that I have: what if Bush, the President, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my worldview will not sustain itself and I may - and again, I don t know if I can physically do this - implode.
Stewart, btw, was . Not by .
But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right.
He understood that to defeat an idea, no matter how perverse and brutal it might be, it was necessary to have an opposite and superior idea.
He understood, in other words — instinctively rather than intellectually — that the only way to win a war against terrorism was to turn it into a war for democracy.
This is now happening.
Against the quest of ordinary Iraqis for dignity and self-respect and freedom, the terrorists in Iraq had nothing ultimately to offer, except blood and hatred.
Already, Palestinians and Afghanis have made the same choice.
Even in Europe, was the big question.
It was difficult not to cringe during Reagan s speech in 1987. He didn t leave a single Berlin cliché out of his script. At the end of it, most experts agreed that his demand for the removal of the Wall was inopportune, utopian and crazy.
Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map. Gorbachev had a lot to do with it, but it was the East Germans who played the larger role. When analysts are confronted by real people, amazing things can happen.
And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted.
Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of Nov. 9, 1989 when the Wall fell.
Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then.
(H/T .)
Having refreshed our memories, Buster confided his theory to me, inspired by both his teacher s sense of wonder in reading about the Bush environmental initiatives, and the memory of Stewart s admission: I think, he said, they hate Bush so much, because they saw that he had greatness in him, and he wasn t supposed to be great. He was supposed to be, at best, slightly worse than his father.
There might be something to that, after all. I mean, for months now better, smarter bloggers than I have tried to understand what it is about Bush that has driven so many people around the bend, and has even inspired journalists we formerly thought very well of to simply lose it where he is concerned.
Perhaps it is the narrative.
Bush is not following the narrative. He was supposed to be a semi-harmless goofball the press and the Dems could run a few circles around before being defeated in 2004. Instead, 9/11 turned him into a president with strong ideas and stubborn resolve.
He couldn t be moved or swayed, not by editorial boards, not by marching millions, and..and the 2002 election went his way!
And his poll numbers wouldn t go down, dammit, they just wouldn t go down!
If this kept up, Bush 43 was actually going to have a LEGACY. A real one, and - if his ideas were successful -a staggering one.
There was only one way to change that: write and talk as much trash as they could, get it all on record. Suspect EVERYTHING. Denouce EVERYTHING (when was the last time you read a sentence about Democrats, re Bush, that used the word support ?
Now, think - how often are the headlines Democrats denounce Bush or battle or decry ) Pummel, pummel, pummel this guy, and eventually he ll go down, and his legacy will be shattered and the narrative, which the press and the Dems were accustomed to controlling, would be safe.
It s only a theory. It s an idea.
I put it out there because Buster has a way of coming at an issue in a fresh, unexpected way. As he just did. Bush wasn t supposed to be this good.
Right On! :: An Intriguing Line of Thought :: January :: 2006 pinged back with
Yesterday, I had about seeing nothing in the mainstream press about a new environmental agreement brokered by the Bush Administration and agreed to by China, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan. I m still not seeing anything about it in the MSM, but James Glassman is writing about it in TCS.
Call it or Sane Kyoto, it appears to be very good news - news that environmentalists and folks on the left would probably applaud if only - you know - someone with a D after their name had done it.
You ll want to read Glassman s whole piece, but here is a taste:
While given short shrift by the puzzled media, this is a big deal, in many ways.
First, it breaks the climate-change deadlock.
This is the agreement that responsible scientists and public officials have been seeking since the failure of the Kyoto Protocol became evident at the global warming conclave in Delhi two years ago. Call it Beyond Kyoto - Way Beyond Kyoto.
Second, the new deal was negotiated and settled without the involvement of the United Nations or the European Union - a clear message from the United States that multilateralism does not have a single definition.
In fact, according to The Guardian newspaper, the agreement - called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate was kept secret by President Bush from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an uncompromising champion of Kyoto, during last month s G8 meeting in Scotland.
Third, the agreement comprises countries that account for 45% of the world s population and about half the world s economic output and greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, implicated in raising surface temperatures. More Asian countries may soon join the pact.
Fourth and most important, it takes a pro-growth approach to combating the possibility of global warming in the century ahead. The new Beyond Kyoto agreement focuses on innovative technology as the antidote, not only to carbon-dioxide emissions but also to dirty air and economic deprivation. The very first statement in the pact is: Development and poverty eradication are urgent and overriding goals internationally.
That s a stark contrast with Kyoto s preference for hard CO2 targets, met through government directives, to reduce energy use. Development is an afterthought.
Even its staunchest supporters now recognize that Kyoto, signed in 1997 and officially ratified last year, has no future.
Many of the world s most prolific emitters of greenhouse gases, including China, India and South Korea, were exempt from the requirements of the protocol. The US and Australia have rejected it. And even noisy advocates, like France, Italy and Canada, are nowhere close to meeting the treaty s targets.
The EU s emissions rose 3.6% between 2001 and 2004 (those in the US fell).
The left is predictably wrinkling its nose at this plan, but it sounds sensible, pragmatic, non-traumatic and, perhaps most importantly, DO-ABLE.
I know, I know, President Bush is bad, stupid, a moron, a liar, a cheat, yadda yadda but the Kyoto Protocol was something his predecessor didn t really have to courage to either sign onto or ignore, and he never suggested an alternative. We ve watched the UN and Europe try to keep a good face on a basically unworkable idea. Hate him all you want, President Bush has vision, he is uninterested in theorizing and gabbing about a problem and is keen to actually DO something.
Wow actually DOING stuff. What a concept.
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