Climate Science Aussie-Style !

Two weeks ago, Andrew Bolt, a journalist from the Herald Sun Newspapers wrote about this news report on startling claims that global warming threatened Aboriginal communities around Lake Eyre (in bush country north of Adelaide):

      The first stage of University of Adelaide research released today shows that South Australia's Arabunna country, which includes Lake Eyre, is likely to get both drier and hotter in decades to come.  "Temperatures could increase up to 4 degrees Celsius in the this area in the next century, threatening the survival of many plants and animals," says the report.

As Mr Bolt noted then, the curious thing was that temperatures in the area hadn't actually been rising and there were very few Aborigines in "Arabunna country" to affect even if they did. So he checked the membership of the University's Lake Eyre Climate Project.    Guess what he found?

Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray (Lead Researcher)
      Senior Lecturer, Adelaide University, Deputy Director of the Centre for Coastal Research and (get this) Convenor of the Envirnomental Activism Stream for Gender Research.

Dr Deane Fergie
     Senior Lecturer, in Anthropology, Adelaide University, and promoter of the Hindmarsh Island 'Secret Women's Business' claim, after which a Royal Commission investigated and found the claims had been fabricated. It was highly critical of Dr Fergie's report and methodology.

Dr Genevieve Bell
     Director of the User Experience Group, Intel, leading new product strategy championing consumer-centric (?) innovation. Adelaide THINKER (?) in Residence. (sic)

Professor Lester-Irabinna Rigney
     Dean, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Education, Adelaide University.

Professor Nick Harvey
     Executive Dean of Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences. Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Group II report on Impacts, Adaptations and Vulnerability. Professor Harvey warned that more cyclones (sic), rising sea levels and increased flooding would be the pattern for Australia's coastal communities by 2050.

Dr John Tibby
     Senior Lecturer, Disciple of Geography, Environment & Population, Adelaide University

Dr Veronica Arbon
     Chair: Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University.
     She stated: "Western science is not the only knowledge position in the world, there are others and we can use others. For all people but particularly for Aboriginal people who come from a knowledge system of fundamental relatedness (maybe like lighting a fire without matches ?), it is critical to actually use that in powerful ways to critique and turn back the Western knowledge position on itself to highlight where it is flawed." (I'll use the matches!)

Rob Palmer
     Consultant: Marketing, branding, research and relationship management.

The Way I See It.....this whole bunch are not climatologists but mainly elitist academics with a warmist agenda. They made this farfetched report without giving a thought to the latest documented global climate findings that indicate no significant temperature rise, ice melting, polar bear deaths, coral reef bleaching, ocean level rising or cyclone activity. I need more convincing that this report is the product of science more than idealogy.

Blame-ologists Play With Fire !

Good News!  Last month's Colorado Springs fire which forced 32,000 residents to flee, claimed 2 lives and destroyed 347 homes is now contained. Bad News: Radical environmentalists won't stop blowing hot air on the air waves about this year's infernal season across the West. And the Associated Press (or rather the Activist Press) fanned the fear-mongering torch with an eco-propaganda piece titled "U.S. summer is what global warming will look like."

Al Gore slithered out of the political pondscum to bemoan nationwide heat records and pimp his new "Climate Reality Project," which blames global warming for the wildfire outbreak. He should get some Reality! The idiots at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) are posting maps with red dots showing the high temperatures across the west and mid-west on their Facebook page with dire warnings. Even the Agriculture Department head Harris Sherman, who oversees the Forest Service was sucked in and claimed to the newspapers: "The climate is changing and these fires are a very strong indicator of that."

The problem is that the actual conclusions of scientists included in the AP's screed don't back up the apocalyptic headline. Just yesterday on the CBS TODAY Show a meteorologist came on to give the weather report and explained what was actually happening. The Polar Jet Stream has moved north and is blocking any Arctic air from entering the United States. He stated; "This is weather....NOT climate. Weather is always variable, freak things happen and this was a local event and not global." A more hedging headline would've been journalistically responsible, but Chicken Little-ism better serves the global warming blame-ologists' agenda.

More inconvenient truths: As the Washington Post noted this week, the National Climatic Data Center shows that "Colorado has actually seen its average temperature drop slightly from 1998 -2011." The TRUTH is that radical green efforts to block logging in national forests since the 1990's are the culprits. Wildlife mitigation experts point to incompetent forest management and militant opposition to thinning the timber fuel supply. Australia had to learn the same lesson after massive forest fires destroyed lives, homes and thousands of areas of forest due to those same Green bastards opposing proper forest management.

Another symptom of green obstructionism; widespread Bark Beetle infestations. The U.S. Forest Service itself reported last year;"
          "During the last part of the 20th Century, widespread treatments in lodgepole pine stands that would have created age class diversity, enhanced the vigor of remaining trees and improved stand resiliency to drought or insect attack -- such as timber harvest and thinning -- lacked public acceptance. Proposals for such practices were routinely appealed and litigated, constraining the ability of the Forest Service to mange what had become large expanses of even-aged stands susceptible to Bark Beetle outbreak and tree death."

The Way I See It....the capitulation to lawsuit-happy deadshit green thugs like Fred Krup (head of the EDF), and others, undermined "public acceptance" of Common Sense, Biodiversity-preserving and lifesaving timber harvest and thinning practices. Local, state and federal officials offered praise to Colorado Springs residents who engaged in preventive mitigation efforts in the neighborhoods. Yet, litigious environmental groups have sabotaged such mitigation efforts at the national level -- in effect --creating an explosive tinderbox out of the West.

Stoking global warming alarms, especially with more scientists discrediting it, may make for titillating headlines and posh Al Gore confabs, but it's the human blame avoidance strategy rooted in ideological extremism and flaming idiocy. Perhaps burning their own headquarters down would give them a real taste of how losing your home really feels.

Michelle Obama's Phony "civilian" Act !

The first lady of the United States (FLOTUS) is on a whirlwind publicity tour for her hefty new food and gardening book ($30), which the White House hopes will bolster Team Obama's favourabilty ratings. I'd say it's a classic recipe for rank campaign hypocrisy and media double standards. While journalists savor chummy chitchats with Mrs. Obama about beets and Beyonce, FLOTUS is once again escaping hard questions about her cronyism, junk science and generous junkets at taxpayer expense.

However, one journalist and the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery), Michelle Malkin, points out Michelle's media blitz has already brought her to many daytime Television shows with celebraty status. Even Whoopy Goldberg, on "The View", couldn't help genuflecting in front of such black royalty. Malkin predicts that as soon as the fawning media frenzy dies down and Mrs. Obama's book and royalties rise to the top of the best-seller list, POTUS will go back to claiming that FLOTUS is a "private citizen" who should be left alone. He has long enjoyed invoking selective immunity for Michelle and lapdog reporters have assisted in creating an impenetrable bubble of political protection around this mean, profligate, policy-meddling first lady.

We've seen it all before!  When conservatives challenged Mrs. O's caustic 2008 campaign trail statements disparaging America (similar to the rants of her favorite deadshit preacher, Rev Wright) her hubby invoked the "civilian" shield. He argued that political spouses should not be subject to public scrutiny because they didn't choose public life.That's B.S. And remember Mrs O's lavish vacation in Spain in 2010, when she was accompanied by an entourage of 70 Secret Service agents and 250 Spanish police officers. Boy, did that provoke a massive public backlash and yet again Obama stressed that the first lady was a "private citizen" who should be off-limits to tough questions about her behavior.

Obama's outspoken bitter-half conscientiously and deliberately inserted herself into the public areana long before her move to the White House.....whether it was taking a publicly subsidized job with Chicago's corrupt Mayor Daley, or parlaying a cushy job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she oversaw a patient-dumping scheme that benefited her political cronies. Let's not forget that Mrs Obama leveraged her hubby's Senate victory to snag a lucrative seat on the corporate board of directors of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. despite having ZERO experience in that industry. And now just last month she got the head of her Obesity program (her husband's golfing buddy) Dr. Eric Whitaker, a $6 million grant from Obamacare with ZERO independent oversight. Taste the boodle!

Oh yeh..just a humble private mom raising her two daughters while Dad does all that hardball politics stuff. Pshaw. When her garden gloves are off, her political boxing gloves are on. She exploited the bully-pulpit to restrict food advertisers'speech. She helped the Service Employees International Union increase the welfare state by padding membership rolls with more government school workers under the guise of fighting childhood obesity. The stench of cronism hangs over the White House.

The Way I See It....is that when Michelle Obama stops using her public office to push new Big Government power grabs and redistributes wealth to her cronies, stoke racial grievances, and meddle in Obama administration personnel decisions that lead to whistleblower firings like former AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin who found millions of dollars were wasted or misspent,....then we'll leave her alone.

Mr. & Mrs. Cranky Pants !

So it turns out that the cool cat billed as "No Drama Obama" by his sycophants is actually quite a drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore media detractors of his administration of the country, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by those critiques.

Back in February, the "Amateur-in-Chief "  had himself a "Toddlers and Tiaras" style meltdown with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix. As Brewer told reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer's recent memoir. She minced no words on the book's cover: Scorpions for Breakfast; My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border. And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state's tough immigration enforcement law. Brewer called Obama "condescending". She said, "He was a little disturbed about my book and complained I hadn't 'treated him cordially in it' and stalked off mid-sentence while I was still responding to him."

Journalist, Michelle Malkin mentions two other governors -- Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana -- have recounted similar presidential snit fits on the tarmac. He sulked over the letter Jindal wrote to Obama about giving Food stamps to Gulf oil spill victims. He bolted after a half-minute meeting with Perry at Austin Airport over border security issues. Perry said, "You know those 'petty grievances' of Washington politics that Obama has long condemned? Now it can be told: He knows whereof he squawks."

As New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's new book, The Obamas, reveals, the president and his inner circle spent even more time carping about conservatives influence on public opinion. What "galled him" she observed, "was when they gained mainstream credibility in a supposed media that was favourable to him." What was especially galling was the release of a new book by Michelle Malkin called:  Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats; Crooks and Cronies.

Among many allegations, Malkin wrote that Michelle Obama --the President's "bitter half" --was secretly running the country in Lady Macbeth-like fashion. Malkin even took a hatchet to Mrs Obama's long dead father (Fraser Robinson) arguing with evidence that his job at a water plant made him part of the "the Chicago political corruptocracy."  The facts? It was former alderman, Leon Depres, who admitted that Mr Robinson's job in the city water department was a reward for loyalty to Mayor Daly's political faction. The department was "a renowned repository of patronage jobs." That revelation had Michelle blow-her-stack! She was angry for days.

It's the Illinois press that has long documented Mrs Obama's ties to Chicago "machine". It was Kantor herself who spotlighted the First Lady's internecine warfare with her husbands Cabinet. And from her angry meddling and aggressive Big Labor-backed push for a publicly subsidized food police corps. When Oprah Winfrey mentioned she maybe able to help, Michelle rebuffed her with "your over-weightness wouldn't look good for the program" and there has been a spiteful rivalry between them ever since. Mrs Obama has been openly expanding her East Wing fiefdom in Marie Antoinette-like fashion, Kantor reports. Maybe in November we'll see her and her husband get the "chop"!

The Way I See It....it shouldn't take long before we see a FLOUS (First Lady of the United States) tarmac tantrum. We did get two divas for the price of one. As longtime observers of the royal Obamas have long observed: Mr. & Mrs. Cranky Pants' problem has never been the colour of their skin. It's the thinness.

GREENS' Love Lost Over Lovelock!

"Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth", says the Bible.

So let joy be unconfined that one of the world's arch Greenies, James Lovelock, creator of the GAIA hypothesis and therefore the founder of the world's most powerful modern religion -- has come clean and admitted that he got it WRONG with his apocalyptic predictions that billions would like die from man-made climate change by the end of the century. And boy are the Watermelon brigades around the world really pissed off with his being a "traitor to the cause" and that their green drivel has been exposed.

Unlike many "environmentalists," who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic. Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millenium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, while CO2 has risen, he acknowledged, "the problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. we thought we knew 20 years ago." He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he's never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, he says, "that's how science advances!"

Among his observations given in an interview with the U.K. Guardian newspaper:
     1) He is a long-time supporter of the new-generation nuclear power plants as a way to seriously lower greenhouse emissions safely, which has also made him unpopular with narrow-minded Greenies. After much thought Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal. "It makes me angry with the Greens for try to knock it. Let's be pragmatic and sensible here, we should be going mad for it," he says indignantly.
     2) Lovelock blasted the Greens for treating global warming like a religion. "It just so happens that the Green religion is taking over from the Christian religion. It's an other guilt-trip. You can't win people around by saying they are guilty for putting carbon dioxide in the air."
     3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines. As he puts it, "so-called 'sustainable development'...is meaningless drivel. we rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient. I personlly can't stand windmills at any price and the cost is millions of birds a year!" 
     4) Finally, about the claims "the Science is settled" on global warming: "One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the whole truth. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it."

The Way I See It....I think Mr Lovelock should be now be donating all his royalties from his earlier alarmist bestsellers to help fund those proper, principled, decent scientists around the world, like Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer and Tim Ball, et al, whose careeers have been blighted and whose lives have been made a misery for having said precisely what Lovelock is now admitting, only much, much earlier.

To top off this conversion, perhaps then, using what's left of his cachet among his Greenie Co-religionists to make amends for his sins by calling for the abolition of the corrupt IPCC. Then we can all rejoice in Bibical fashion.

The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most !

"I am not ready to back away from my views," says the soul & champion of Russia's opposition, Alexei Navalny. The anticorruption blogger and activist has been, in the last 3 months, in the middle of Russia's unexpected political awakening. By the tens of thousands, Russians shed their fear and apathy to protest December's fraud-ridden parliamentary elections and Mr Putin's hold on power. From a crowded stage of opposition figures, Mr Navalny has emerged as the charismatic and fresh face of the movement.

In a repressive regime like that of ex-KBG thug Vladimir Putin, there is a constant struggle between the dictatorship and those who oppose it and try to liberate vital information from a non-transparent apparatus. Alexei is at the vanguard of these "data dissidents." He built a network to reveal the corruption of the Putin regime, relentlessly ferreting and documenting the kleptocracy case by case, with popular outrage as a result.

Apart from his persistence, courage and skill, this 35 year old lawyer possesses the more subtle requirements of leadership in the modern age. His personal charisma is complemented by a sadonic sense of humor that is ideal for puncturing the propoganda of the grey humorless Kremlin. His knack for phasing has branded Putin's United Russia Party as the "Party of Crooks and Thieves" for all time.

He says, "The Kremlin should understand these tens of thousands of people will never leave the streets. We will never consider Putin as a president with legitmacy." Escalation carries risks for the opposition. Confrontation with police and the Kremlin's Nashi Youth shock troops may scare the middle-class Muscovites but many still joined the winter's protests. The Kremlin seems to fear My Navalny most of all the dissident figures because he is so good on digging up dirt on shocky government tendering and purchases. Websites and TV stations friendly to the regime have tried to smear him as a CIA operative or Hitler-like nationalist. He is the sole opposition leader still barred from state-controlled television.

"I'm on the very blackest part of the Black List," says Mr. Navalny. When television host and Putin family friend, Ksenia Sobchak, invited him on her popular MTV show it was yanked off the air---presumably by government orders. "Sometimes it seems to me that there is a small crazy guy in the Kremlin who works for me," Alexei jokes. "Relatively few people watch such shows, but because they banned it, there are millions of Russians now who wonder, 'Who is this guy? Why do they fear him so much?'"


The Way I See It....Alexi's secret weapon is the rapidly rising number of Russians on the Internet. There were an estimated 3 million in 2000 when Putin took power and 35 million in 2008 when his second term ended, and today there are more than 60 million (44% of the population)! His growing audience of Truth seekers is largely but not entirely young, and he has given a voice to millions Russians whose calls for fair elections refute the western critics that often declare the Russians are unsuited for democracy.

I'm sure that idea is at the forefront of Putin's thinking. As his popularity has slid, Mr Putin's rhetoric has hardened. He doesn't see why the past 12 years of  his "sovereign democracy" is not appreciated. "Putin did a lot of good stuff in 1999 until 2003," says Alexei, " but it's obvious now that his system of power is based on corruption and people around him depend only on money and its corrupting influence."

Mr Putin was badly rattled by the Arab uprisings, most of all Gadhafi's fall and murder. Pointing to the dead Libyan leader in a photgraph with Putin, Mr Navalny say, "The historic end of this guy drives Putin crazy. He thinks the only way for him to be alive and healthy and rich is to be president. This latest Czar is 'trapped' by power but we'll be still working hard on keeping the bastard honest!"

The Junk About Junk food !

"Enough of this trash-talk over burgers and fried chicken! There's nutrition to be found in those fast-food joints!" says Bob Lyons, author of Panic on a Plate, How Society Developed an Eating Disorder, which explains why we need to rethink our fast-food fears.

Junk food is Big business. Activists and Health Officials loudly lament the abundance of fast-food joints around the world. If these officials and fine-food lovers are to be believed, this explosion of junk food means we are on the road to Hell. But...does the idea that junk food is less nutritious than "real food" stand up to close examination?

Take the Big Mac meal from McDonald's. The sandwich (burger) contains about 500 calories, including the two thin slices of ground beef and a slice of cheese. The accompanying fries are surprisingly nutritious. French fries contain substantially more vitamin C pound for pound than apples! A portion of fries contains between one-quarter and one-third of the daily requirement of vitamin C for an adult.

Even the ubiquitous tomato ketchup is a surprisingly healthy product, but that shouldn't be surprising since it is essentially concentrated tomatoes with a little vinegar, salt and sugar.According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 25 grams of ketchup contain 25 calories, barely any fat and about 0.25 grams of sodium...but it also contains 6% of an adult's recommended daily intake of vitamin C and about 4.5% of the vitamin A requirements.

The idea that a McDonald's meal is pretty good nutritionally would obviously send our health guardians into apoplectic fits. Oh yes, in the world of the Food Police, potatoes don't count as vegetables. Image that! But while living on the diet of fast food might mean missing out on one or two nutrients --never mind being a bit tedious -- it is certainly at least as nutritious as the alternatives offered up as superior. For example, how about a nice salad? All those crunchy leaves, a few tomatoes, perhaps some kind of protein like chicken or tuna? Try living on that for a few weeks and watch yourself waste away.

The Way i See It....becoming stick thin and enduring a constant craving for food might be reasonable for a wannabe Hollywood starlet, but it's no way for the rest of s to live. I think a sense of perspective is required on what is and is not a good diet. For example, consider the diets of those who live in developing countries where junk food is unheard of. There, one fod may dominate people's diets, be it rice, bread, corn or cassava. Meat and vegetables asre added when available, but the diet remains limited. Can that be described as better than living off of burgers, French fries, pizza and fried chicken?  Think about it.