More on Hockey Stick Hokum

SEE HERE

... Thus the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series, depends on the influence of a woefully thin subsample of trees and the exclusion of readily-available data for the same area. Whatever is going on here, it is not science.

Obama Muzzling the Military

SEE HERE and HERE The president is apparently unhappy with his pick of military commanders. No doubt after he signals his displeasure they will henceforth give him only their candid advice in private. Or perhaps the best and the brightest among them will see the handwriting on the wall and resign. Serving a commander and chief who puts subordinate and trivial priorities ahead of the nation's security is hardly one to inspire confidence. The military lost a lot of fine officers when President Clinton entered the oval office, a man on record as "loathing the military." President Obama has not said as much, but his actions speak rather loudly. He praises our enemies, apologises for the United States and disses our friends.

Democrats Are Really Good At Recessions: Causing Them I Mean!

This blogger points out that the current recession started when the Democrats took over congress in 2007. It always fascinates me how the news media tends to point the finger at presidents when they want to talk about economic matters when the president doesn't do more than propose economic policy. The congress passes all appropriations and actually sets the economic policy. So when Clinton is given credit for balancing the budget it is conveniently forgotten that it was a Republican congress. When George Bush is blamed for the current economic mess it is conveniently forgotten that it was a Democratic congress. SEE HERE for the thoughts of Steve at motorcitytimes.com.

Three Government Reports Spell Out Economic Doomsday

And you thought there would be a secure retirement in your future? — think again. SEE HERE Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. We have a Congress and a government that is doing much the same. Insanity is probably too mild a word for this bunch.

Two Rules

In a world increasingly dominated by people who are "on the make" and who only use words to manipulate others and not essentially to convey meaning, it becomes important to figure out how to make judgments. I was thinking about that this morning and concluded that two rules would help to clarify things:

The First Rule is one that scientists accept (at least in what are called the 'hard' sciences) and that is the rule that: Data trumps all arguments. If you want to deal meaningfully with reality you have to know what reality is and that isn't a matter of clever words, but of actual facts. This is in my mind today because of the information on the cooked hockey stick data in the global warming dialogue that I've been observing the past few days. If it stands up, global warming looks like history and rather sordid history at that.

The Second Rule is listen to what people say but pay particular attention to what they do. If their actions do not correspond to their words then add them to the list of probable manipulators. What people do tells us more about what they are then what they say. I had a boss who used to go around saying "perceptions are reality" — I don't happen to agree with that sentiment, but I understand it and understand that for a lot of people it amounts to "gospel." They spin stories and create illusions, while in fact they are doing very different things. Most of them are not good enough at it to go undetected. Remember that to be an effective liar you have to have an incredibly good memory, especially if you are spinning different lies for different folks. Pretty soon it gets too complicated and you mess up.

Gloom and Doom ... and all that ...

I'm an optimist or perhaps more accurately just a cheerful person. Writing this blog can be a downer since all the news seems a bit on the gloomy and doomy side. The economic front doesn't look too positive as we grow the debt madly and the rest of the world talks about dumping the dollar as the international reserve currency of choice. The current option on the table is some sort of basket of currencies. One problem it would seem with all of that is that none of the currencies are backed with anything but good will and good will is increasingly suspect as a unit of value.

When it comes to the United States, we seem to be everyone's favorite whipping boy, even our president and first lady seem a bit cool towards the United States, jetting around the world apologizing for us at every stop. You usually don't reward the folks you don't like with good will.

But another factor would seem to be that a reserve currency has to be based on large global economies. Hmmm... that's a rather limiting requirement. We are the largest economy on the globe so in one sense it is hard to find a way to escape from the U.S. dollar. But in the meanwhile we've been intrinsically devaluing it as we print more and more, create larger deficits, unlimited future entitlements, and sell treasury bonds (unbacked except for our "good will") to everyone who will belly up to the bar. I think the string on those strategies is about run out.

Then we're doing other really dumb things, like pretending we can simultaneously provide health care to everyone and cut costs at the same time. Is there anyone with an ounce of sense up there in Washington? I'm beginning to doubt it.

Meanwhile the cap and trade bill is being touted as part of the solution of the awful global warming crisis which has so far given one non-entity the Nobel Prize and lots of others government grants to study what is increasingly likely to be a non-issue as we found out a couple of days ago that the hockey was cooked, i.e. an artifact of inappropriate science gone slightly mad. So instead of taxing ourselves to death we ought to get out there and say "Stop this nonsense."

So what's to be cheerful about? Well, as I always say, the sun came up today and that's a very optimistic sign. If it didn't we'd be in very deep doodoo very quickly. I was driving home from the college yesterday evening and the sun was setting and the moon was rising. Just for a moment I was driving directly towards the rising moon about 15 degrees above the horizon and in my rear view mirror the sun was setting also about 15 degress above the horizon. I felt a little tingle at these two juxtaposed celestial signs both in my visual range at the same time. We are always occupied with ourselves and our business while all around us the universe revolves, majestic in the dark silence of space. Psalm 8:4-5 "4 What is man that thou art art mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? ⁵ You made him a little less than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor."

AGW Is Dead

"He's dead Jim" is something my young son Christopher would say when he was a little boy quoting Bones on Star Trek. Well that could well be said of Anthropogenic Global Warming which has been the conventional wisdom for something like a decade due as we now know to selective use of the available data. Cherry picking the data appears to be what was done and now that the entire data set has been used the result is that the hockey stick has indeed disappeared and with it the primary evidence, seeded into data sets driving many climate projections, on which the claim of AGW was based. SEE HERE and HERE. It is probably all over but the shouting unless there is a plausible reason, unlikly, for specifically cherry picking the 12 series used, the only 12 which showed the "desired" effect.

When all the data was used the effect disappears. Here is what the second reference above cites:

McIntyre therefore prepared a revised dataset, replacing Briffa’s selected 12 cores with the 34 from Khadyta River. The revised chronology was simply staggering. The sharp uptick in the series at the end of the twentieth century had vanished, leaving a twentieth century apparently without a significant trend.