The Hockey Stick Graph: Scientific Malfeasance?

Ross McKitrick is professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Guelph. He has been studying the arguments in favour of global warming for well over a decade. He says the data used to create arguments for global warming such as the Mann "hockey stick" are either "flawed, misleading or simply non-existent."

McKitrick has written an impressive opinion piece in Friday's Financial Post.

The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

And this:

I get exasperated with fellow academics, and others who ought to know better, who pile on to the supposed global warming consensus without bothering to investigate any of the glaring scientific discrepancies and procedural flaws. Over the coming few years, as the costs of global warming policies mount and the evidence of a crisis continues to collapse, perhaps it will become socially permissible for people to start thinking for themselves again.

I like that last bit. Read the whole thing here.

What A Shame, What A Shame, What A Shame

In the Ottawa Citizen, David Warren writes a Lament for a nation:

With an incredible rapidity, America's status as the world's pre-eminent superpower is now passing away. This is a function both of the nearly systematic abandonment of U.S. interests and allies overseas, with metastasizing debt and bureaucracy on the home front.

And while I think the U.S. has the structural fortitude to survive the Obama presidency, it will be a much-diminished country that emerges from the "new physics" of hope and change.

Drudge Headline: America Stunned

No, America is probably not stunned. But someone else is.

The defeat of Obama's campaign in Copenhagen to bring the Olympics to Chicago is so complete Drudge had to go to the scholarly Dictionary of Newfoundland English to find the only word in the English canon that describes Obama to a tee:

stunned [phonetics unavailable]. Collocations fashioned on OED stunpoll 'blockhead' (1794-) D, EDD 1 'stupid fellow' Ha Do So D; cp EDD stunt 6 'unyielding ... sulky; impassive; stupid'; PARTRIDGE stunned for sense 2.
1 Foolish, stupid, naive.

Update: From Don Surber. What a total waste of presidential prestige.

Four Environmental Heresies

I'm thinking it's time to check in on TED again. Naturally, the Professor's beat me to it.

Stewart Brand helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s. He founded the original homesteader bible, The Whole Earth Catalog.

Brand has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book.

Sully Flies Again

Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger is the hero pilot who safely ditched his jetliner loaded with passengers in the Hudson River last January after multiple bird strikes killed his engines. His copilot that day was was Jeff Skiles.

Today Sully and Skiles piloted the same flight. It was the first time they've flown together since the famous ditching in which all 155 aboard survived.

A passenger said,  "I put my seat back and took a nap. I felt really honored and safe that it was him."

Before his flight today, Sullenberger said his so-called "Miracle on the Hudson" "happened at a time when people needed to know that good could still be done in the world."

AGW Scores Own Goal With Broken Hockey Stick

No doubt you have heard of the Mann "hockey stick" graph that shows global temperatures shooting through the roof in the late 20th century after centuries of stability. Much of the politics and rhetoric surrounding anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has been based on this graph, most notably Al Gore's entertaining move An Inconvenient Truth.

Now the data behind the graph has been scientifically discredited by Canadian scientist Steve McIntyre. Much more on the scandal here.

How To Handle A Cooking Oil Fire In The Kitchen

Have you ever had to deal with a cooking oil fire in the kitchen? I have. It's frightening and extremely dangerous.

A good friend emailed me a link to this video on how to quickly and effectively deal with a fire on the stove. Don't be put off by the title of the video - nobody dies.

Whatever you do, do NOT throw water on the fire. The water sinks to the bottom of the oil, becomes superheated and explodes out of the pot throwing burning oil up like a volcano.

Watch and learn.

Football Causes Brain Damage. Especially If You Play It.

Why would it surprise anyone to learn that football players who smash into each other get brain damaged? Apparently it has not been that clear because the NFL had to study it.

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

I'd like to see similar studies for hockey and rugby too.

Who Is The Real Criminal Here?

You would think that all the former-and-present pot smoking lefties in Canada and the US would be enraged at the extradition of seed-seller Marc Emery.

You would think they would be at the barricades to protest his five-year sentence in a US jail for an act that is hardly even considered a crime in Canada.

"I'm going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders," he noted. "There isn't a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, 'I was hurt by Marc Emery.' No one."

But who are all the powerful lefties - including Hilary Clinton - defending against extradition to the US?

Roman Polanski.

Update: From Andrew Breitbart's BigHollywood:

The popular liberal site [Huffington Post] has posted numerous essays since news that Polanski was arrested in Switzerland broke over the weekend, each arguing vehemently against the Oscar winner’s persecution.

But HuffPo readers aren’t buying it. And boy, are they angry.

Honduras' Constitution Under Attack

Via Instapundit, here is a must-see PJTV Documentary of the big trouble surrounding Honduras.

The documentary runs 24 minutes and is titled Wrong Side Of The Law: The Coup in Honduras, the Obama Administration, and Democracy Under Fire.

It graphically demonstrates how the Obama administration is not only on the wrong side of the law but on the wrong side of history.

Bored?

Need your heart rate boosted? Watch this full screen.

Man Bites Dog. Yes, Really

From the CBC:

A Saskatoon man says he unleashed his inner canine in order to stop a wandering pit bull terrier from attacking his neighbour's dog about two weeks ago.

Who You Callin' A Nazi, Nazi.

If you've seen this poster or similar ones on TV then you probably believe the right has sunk pretty low in the US. And that's exactly what the left - and the leftist media - wants you to believe.

This poster was not produced by anyone on the right. It was produced by the political action committee of Lyndon LaRouche - a convicted felon and seven-time candidate for the Democrats. Go look it up.

Isn't it remarkable that the left had no problem comparing Bush to Hitler and yet when one of their own compares Obama to Hitler, they still smear the right. Click here for,oh, hundreds of examples. Somehow I don't think these people were righties.

Canada Surrenders Marc Emery To Hypocrisy

Canadian marijuana activist and Libertarian Marc Emery has surrendered to the authorities and will be extradited to the US. He has agreed to a tentative plea bargain that will keep his two Canadian employees out of US prison. Emery faces a minimum sentence in the US of five years. His crime - selling marijuana seeds by mail order into the United States.

Emery has been selling seeds since 1995. He's received slaps on the wrist from Canadian authorities in the past, but when the Americans decided they wanted him in jail, Canada handed him over.

Ian Mulgrew writes in today's Vancouver Sun:

It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis.

Emery challenged a law he disagrees with using exactly the non-violent, democratic processes we urge our children to embrace and of which we are so proud.

"The same seeds I sold are being sold right in America," Emery complained. "The people in California are doing it the same way I did so there's a terrible hypocrisy at work here."

He's right.

And this:

Emery is facing more jail time than corporate criminals who defraud widows and orphans and longer incarceration than violent offenders who leave their victims dead or in wheelchairs.

Whatever else you may think of him -- and I know he rankles many -- what is happening to him today mocks our independence and our ideal of justice.

Excellent Wikipedia entry on Marc Emery here.

President Pantywaist

That's gonna leave a mark. Writing in The Telegraph, author Gerald Warner:

Despite propaganda to the contrary, 58 per cent of Poles were in favour of the missile shield. But small nations must assess the political will of larger powers. Thanks to President Pantywaist’s supine policies, the former satellite states can see that they are fast returning to their former status. The American umbrella cannot be relied upon on a rainy day. They have been here before. Poles remember how a leftist US president sold them out to Russia at Tehran and Yalta. The former Czechoslovakia was betrayed twice: in 1938 and 1945.

If the word is out that America is in retreat, it will soon find it has no friends.

Gadhafi Bails

Like many's the second-rate celebrity before him, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has cancelled his stopover here in St. John's. That's a relief because I was afraid things were going to get all protest-y once people realized the tent he was planning to set up wasn't a beer tent.