Friday, November 25, 2011

Climategate

Generally speaking to be informed on the East Anglia University climate study imbroglio takes a lot of study and background information. The  "Watts Up With That' site provides an extremely useful post by Willis Eschenbach here that helps one understand the controversy without having to spend a huge amount of time getting up to speed on all the background information on this subject.  Boiling it all down to a few sentences (it's necessary to read the whole post by Eschenbach, including the link he recommends and the replies from what appears to be mostly scientific community people) the record of temperature changes from many "stations" around the world, which provides the basis for the AGW claims, have been fudged to make the case.  In addition the EAU scientists have been busily deflecting inquiries under the FOI to provide raw data from the "stations" knowing full well that the data is compromised.  This is an important issue because it goes to the heart of government funded Solyndras and all the rest of the research that is going on to support the pro climate change cabal.  Al Gore is at the heart of this story and he should be very concerned for his cause, all based upon the flawed data provided by the government funded EAU directed study of climate change.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Alternative view of great 20th century leaders

Here is a book that must go on the MUST read list if you are a libertarian or have tendencies in that direction.  It is available at the Mises book store on line.

Give Carter some credit

When the final chapter is written on the Obama interregnum, which hopefully lasts but four years, it will be seen that he lost several opportunities to economically right the ship and that he failed miserably.  This article by the always reliable Holman Jenkins of the WSJ, hits the nail on the head.  Obama inherited a mess, of that there is no doubt, however instead of focussing on some fairly obvious fixes, he choose to pursue a radical plan of reshaping and redirecting the entire economy which in the end only made the mess he inherited messier.  Jenkins explains that because Obama had no real world experience organizing or running anything other than some community social justice program, he had no basis in the real world for making real world decisions during a crises.  Thus, he plowed full steam ahead with an experimental energy policy that in the best of economic circumstances could be helpful only at the margins, and he crammed through his democrat controlled Congress a redo of 1/7th of the US economy a socialized healthcare plan that was thoroughly rejected by the public just a little over a decade ago.  In addition he turned loose all manner of so-called czars whose mission was to re-regulate the economy while at the same time demonizing the producer class in the country and re-empowering unions.  All of these moves have been tried in different countries and even in this country before and they have failed repeatedly.  Like the only other academic in the history of the White House, another "progressive" Woodrow Wilson,  Obama has given us the specter of abstract thinking to address and solve real life problems.  How many times do we have to repeat the mistakes of the past before recognizing the need to apply proven solutions to our problems?  It's all very discouraging.