Sunday, April 29, 2007

Mars is warming - not my fault

How could people on Earth cause Mars to be warming? it is:
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake. Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period. Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena. The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
From the Times (UK). How about activity of the Sun? This short article doesn't say if they checked.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Overweight due to Farm Subsidies

Today low income people are more likely to be overweight than under. Hunger may be a problem some times and places, but there are no thin people to show for it. Why are the poor heavy? I have observed it and wondered. Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington figured it out. The US farm subsidies underwrite five high-volume commodities, three of which which tend to carbohydrates and fats, not healthy vegetables. And we get what we taxpayers are stuck paying for. Go into the store and shop for calories while watching your money. Junk snacks and pop - soda drinks - you will load up on. Not vegetables - much more expensive for the calories. The New York Times has the story:

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Carbon indulgences - Sin and pay

Sin and buy your way out. That's what Albert Gore, Jr. is doing. He is not conserving; he is buying his way out of guilt. Financial Times - Industry Caught in Smokescreen:
Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits. A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place. Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Muslim leader for democracy and Israel - Wahid of Indonesia

Indonesians know him universally as Gus Dur, a title of affection and respect for this descendant of Javanese kings. In the U.S. and Europe he is barely spoken of at all--which is both odd and unfortunate, seeing as he is easily the most important ally the West has in the ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism. ... What really concerns Mr. Wahid is what he sees as the increasingly degraded state of the Muslim mind. That problem is becoming especially acute at Indonesian universities and in the pesantren--the religious boarding schools that graduate hundreds of thousands of students every year. "We are experiencing the shallowing of religion," he says, bemoaning the fact that the boarding schools persist in teaching "conventional"--that word again--Islam. But Mr. Wahid's critique is not just of formal Islamic education. He also attacks the West's philosophy of positivism, which, he says, "relies too much on the idea of conquering knowledge and mastering scientific principles alone." This purely empirical and essentially soulless view of things, broadly adopted by Indonesia's secular state universities, gives its students a bleak choice: "Either they follow the process or they are outside the process."

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Bible publishers killed in Turkey

"The Religion of Peace" - NOT Christians were killed in Turkey because they were publishing the Bible in Malatya in the southeast part of Turkey. News 24:
Attackers on Wednesday slit the throats of three people in a Turkish publishing house that printed Bibles, the latest attack on minorities in mainly Muslim Turkey, said officials The victims were found with their hands and feet bound, said governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz. He said one of the victims may have been German, but the embassy could not confirm it. Four people were detained in connection with the attack in the southeastern city of Malatya, said the governor. The killings come as political tensions rise between the powerful secular elite, including army generals and judges, and the religious minded AK Party government over next month's presidential elections.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Hong Kong still leads the world

Hong Kong after almost 10 years as part of China still is the most economically free country in the world. Despite no natural resources, Hong Kong has $33,500 per capita income -- 8th in the world. We didn't expect it. The new American magazine:
A decade ago this summer, as Britain transferred its prize colony to Chinese control, the gloom about Hong Kong’s future was thick and pervasive. Robert Burns, a trade consultant with McKeon-Burns international associates, was a typical mourner. “I don’t think the Chinese bureaucracy can resist the impulse to screw it up,” he said at the time. “In a few years you’ll have an isolated Vatican City on the island of Victoria.”
China didn't crack down and put Hong Kong under its heel, which we all expected.
Hong Kong has been immune to major meddling because Chinese officials realize it’s the engine for much of China’s explosive growth. But Hong Kong is also expanding into a world financial center in its own right. In 2006, it was the number-one market for stock offerings worldwide. While enthusiasm for Shanghai—the apple of the Beijing regime’s eye—is high among foreign business leaders, it is still Hong Kong that’s leading China.
... The secret of Hong Kong’s success isn’t hard to find. It’s economic freedom, and everywhere a visitor is struck by how much of it there is. Red tape is almost unknown; registering a company requires only a one-page form. “A businessman can walk off a plane in the morning and start operating a firm in the afternoon,” reports The Economist. As it has every year since the ratings system began, Hong Kong ranks first, by a wide margin, on the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom compiled by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The United States is fourth; Canada, tenth; France, 45th; China, 119th. Since the 1997 handover, Hong Kong’s score has stayed steady. “Hong Kong remains a model of economic freedom,” said the 2006 Index. “It is a free port with no barriers to trade; has simple procedures for starting enterprises, free entry of foreign capital and repatriation of earnings, and transparency; and operates under the rule of law.”
Freedom causes prosperity!

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Nixon changed history


Friday, April 13, 2007

Rachel Carson - Millions Dead due to Malaria


Thursday, April 12, 2007

Duke or Rutgers?


Monday, April 09, 2007

The only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes

"...the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes." Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is writing in Newsweek magazine. The alarmism we are hearing constantly is based on the misunderstanding that the climate would be fixed, never changing, if we humans weren't messing it up.
And should we welcome warming?

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Global Warming Fraud - Polar Bears

Albert Gore, Jr. shows polar bears drowning. And it's your fault. You caused global warming that killed the innocent bears, according to Goracle. But it's not true. And the photo shown around the world as portraying polar bears endangered is misrepresented, according to the photographer. It was printed in the Sunday Telegraph (UK), It made it onto the front page of the New York Times. And the International Herald Tribune. It also ran in London's Daily Mail, The Times of London and Canada's Ottawa Citizen - and that's just to name a few. Newsbusters collected the facts, the lies, and the conveniently misunderstood.
It turns out -- as NewBuster Jake Gontesky reported on March 20 -- the picture was taken in August, “when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming.” The photographer, Australian marine biology student Amanda Byrd, didn’t think the bears were in any jeopardy: They did not appear to be in danger…I did not see the bears get on the ice, and I did not see them get off. I cannot say either way if they were stranded or not. Denis Simard of Environment Canada agreed: You have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. This is a perfect picture for climate change…you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die...But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim...They are still alive and having fun.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Cost of classical music rising - always

The cost of producing classical music - live or recorded is rising and always will. It's basic economics called "Baumol's cost disease." In most areas of the economy productivity is rising due to better management methods and improved technology. This lowers costs. Improved productivity also raises pay. (Don't oppose increased productivity, because you will be opposing the pay raise you expect.) And increased pay puts us ahead. Our pay increases faster than the cost of living, so we can and do live better than we did 20 years ago. But this is bad news for areas that can't use technology to increase productivity. The typical pay goes up throughout the economy. But the classical music "industry" has to pay people also and they have to compete for them it requires paying more each year as the typical pay goes up. This is called the Baumol cost disease because it is unavoidable. Costs are going up and will continue to. It's like gravity: you can't outlaw it. Another way to look at it: Increased technology and productivity in manufacturing cause the amount of labor to reduce, which reduces costs. But the amount of labor to produce Carl Orff's Carmina Burana can't be reduced. Read more on this at Via James Glassman's excellent new magazine The

Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy

That's the headline by the Washington Post - her top cheerleader.
Statement from the Prime Minister of Israel's office:
The Prime Minister's Office issued a rare "clarification" Wednesday that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks. According to the statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi on Sunday that "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East." Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace with Israel would be judged by its willingness to "cease its support of terror..."
Nancy, respectfully, there is a reason why the foreign policy of the United States is entrusted to the President and no one else. The US has one foreign policy. You are causing damage - clearly. You have a large job to fill in the US House of Representatives; don't try to do the job given the President in our Constitution.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Early Daylight Savings - Waste of Effort

We got nothing for the bother of starting daylight savings time 3 weeks early. A waste. The US Senate promised us that it would save energy. Why were they so sure? I had no idea. The power companies have the data, from Reuters:
We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities. ... For example, households may draw less electricity for lights at night, but will use more power in the early in the day as they wake to darker and chillier mornings.
My philosophy is "if you want to get up early, go ahead, get up! You don't need senator Patty Busybody to give you permission." Some people can go to work early; some can't. If you can't, then get up early and enjoy theher with it. That's my way. Via Techdirt.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Senator Feinstein finally caught on conflict

Senator Diane Feinstein stepped down as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations last week. Did she depart because of her conflict of interest with her husband's business? She won't say.
Feinstein's press office was contacted several times Friday by Cybercast News Service, but her office did not provide a statement on the matter at the end of the day.
We covered her conflict of interest on January 27. For several years she oversaw hearings involving her husband for about $1,000,000,000 per year. Tell us, Di Fi, why did you step down?

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Mitigating effects of global warming

Our choices are more than sit and suffer or let Albert Gore, Jr. shut down industry and force us into poverty. The earth is warming out of the last ice age, so it's not your fault. The effects include the sea level rising and shifting where rain falls. So let's think of what we can do about it. We can raise existing bulkheads and build new ones. It costs, but it doesn't put Gore in charge. We can install desalination plants where there will be less rainfall. Bjorn Lomborg in the Skeptical Environmentalist estimates the costs of avoiding the effects by such construction projects. Off the top of my head, his estimate is large in dollars, but tiny as a fraction of the world's economy. And, again, it does not require impoverishing everyone but AlGore' family. Today's New York Times recognizes that we can mitigate global warming:
Of course the NYT can't tell it straight; they have to make this another "evil whilte males" story. Update: Henry Miller at Hoover Institute has looked at the options for mitigating global warming. But his article is based on an article in Nature Magazine 2/8/2007 by Roger Pielke of University of Colorado - in PDF form. They explain that mitigating, that is, adapting for global warming overlaps with other sources of problems. But one big problem is that policy makers are so focused on CO2 that they ignore much larger problems.
For example, in the Philippines, policy-makers have begun to acknowledge the flood threats posed by the gradual sea-level rise of 1 to 3 millimetres per year, projected to occur with climate change. At the same time, they remain oblivious to, or ignore, the main reason for increasing flood risk: excessive ground-water extraction, which is lowering the land surface by several centimetres to more than a decimetre (4 inches) per year. As with Katrina, the political obsession with the idea that climate risks can be reduced by cutting emissions distracts attention from the more important factors that drive flood risks.