Sidebar Notes

A few new things to note on the sidebar today:

Several new books and a two-part categorization scheme for them. I've been reading John Bunyan's 17th century allegorical classic "The Pilgrim's Progress" and finding it surprisingly readable and relevant. I also received as a gift from my wife last weekend a copy of "The Complete C.S. Lewis" (great deal at Costco). Unfortunately Amazon doesn't seem to carry that particular compilation. Instead, I've linked to two particular CSL works (all of his stuff is brilliant): "The Screwtape Letters" and "Mere Christianity". The latter is an intellectual power-drill-press into some of the most fundamental questions of faith. Highly recommended. This was my second time reading it. I expect it won't be the last. It's rich like Ben and Jerry's.

I've added the One Year Bible Blog to the blogroll--a compliment to the One Year Bible-on-Radio that I've been listening to on podcasts while walking the dog. It's worthwhile just for the announcer's voice: velvety, deep and authoritative, yet also somehow jaunty. The program moves sequentially and mechanically (365 roughly equal-sized readings) through the Hebrew Scriptures (aka, 'Old Testament') as well as the New Testament (in parallel). It goes through Psalms and Proverbs in the same fashion.

In other words, one is treated each day to roughly 1/365th of each of the four. (Psalms is done twice so it's more like 1/182.5th). What I've found remarkable is that, without any human engineering, it's common on any given day for the sections to relate quite tightly to one another. (Some readers are nodding their heads sagely at what they've probably known from childhood. I missed that; for me it's all quite fresh.)

One gets the sense of the wholeness and holistic coherence of the Bible and for the implausibility of it talking about two gods or that God "changed his mind" with Christ. Instead, the sweep of the two sections makes them inseparable and complimentary, with a progression and flow through history. (Did you deal with your two-year-old the same way you now treat your 18-year-old? I didn't either. You get the idea.) I'd been through exercises before in which a specific narrative or thematic line was drawn between Old and New. The regular, almost routine parallelism without such interference is quite remarkable and ultimately faith-enhancing. Try it. You may surprise yourself by liking it. At minimum, you'll probably learn something. I have.

In a similar vein, today's (Saturday's) verse of the day (top of the sidebar) is Isaiah 53: 5-6. For me anyway, this is one of those whoa... can you read that again? knock-your-socks-off predictive passages pointing to Jesus the Messiah. If you've never read it before, take a look. And if that isn't enough, check out Psalm 22.

Finally (and in a complete shift of gears), Regime Change Iran is looking to evolve its reporting model and is seeking funds to do so. They could use our support. Check it out.

Second to Michael Yon

Michael Yon's winning post at the Watchers' Council this week (in the non-council category) is very very good, with pictures and a story line and some real heft and gravitas to it. Yon writes:

...lately I’ve been fighting just to find a place to live and work—like that tiny trailer with that tiny desk and tiny stool in Mosul. It’s been a month since I’ve had reliable internet access. A month. It took twenty-five hours spread over two days to transmit about a dozen photos for this dispatch. Two work days

....it bears frequent reminding that General Petraeus has won complex battles before in Iraq. He is extremely open with the media, and nobody with PhD from Princeton would invite a bunch of writers to document an historical fight he plans to lose. He’s invited press to a process he aims to resolve... like it or not, this is YOUR war.

My second-place post was something of a free-form rant with no links tossed-off at the last minute before a conference call with a client because I hadn't posted in several days and my traffic was in danger of being reduced to my sister-in-law plus a faithful friend or two who secretly think I may be nuts for not quitting this blogging thing long ago. (Thanks to whomever nominated me. The traffic spike was a nice surprise.)

Yon is actually living in a war zone, dealing with what he writes about 24/7 and risking his life doing it whereas I comfortably pontificate in my sweaty running togs from my home office in a safe, upscale Boston suburb when the mood strikes. About the most exciting and dangerous thing around here this week was finding myself one of the first on the scene for this on my daily run yesterday.

And finally, I've earned (I think) a total of a couple of free books' worth of gift certificates to Amazon in two full years of doing this a few hours a week whereas Yon blogs full time and professionally, supported by reader contributions. Then there's the fact that I missed by the narrowest of margins being 'passed' by the excellent third-place finisher, Freedom's Cat.

Second... I'll take it. Yeah, I've got a competitive streak that won't quit. I'm working on it.

8 vs. 93 - How Many Fired Prosecutors Make a News Story?

The W$J cuts to the chase this morning on MSM coverage of the Bush White House's firing of eight U.S. attorneys (over what doesn't matter--it's a president's prerogative) versus the Clinton White House's firing of all 93 of them fourteen years ago:

According to the Tyndall Report [link added]... during the week of March 12-16, the three network evening newscasts spent a total of 45 minutes on the prosecutors story, with the war in Iraq placing second at 16 minutes. "World News with Charles Gibson" logged 13 of those 45 minutes on the prosecutors.

By contrast, in 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno's wholesale firing of U.S. attorneys appointed by George H.W. Bush was a non-story on the ABC evening news -- literally a non-story, according to records kept by the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive, as in zero coverage. CBS also skipped it; NBC gave it 20 seconds.

Excruciatingly convoluted partisan explanations and self-serving justifications for the grossly obvious double standard are welcome. We could use some entertainment.

Being Smart About Iran

A couple of quick observations about the Iranian situation. As with Tuesday's post, please pardon the abbreviated form. Work and life call. In no particular order...

There's something about this picture of British Navy sailor Faye Turney that's both disturbing and reassuring at the same time. She's obviously under stress and duress (eyes closed as she thinks: get this freakin' head-scarf off me--positioned way back on her head). Yet the cigarette speaks volumes: a private Western attitude the mullahs' can neither understand nor touch.

Then there's the pitiful immaturity of Iran's insisting that Britain admit to something it did not do.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki demanded Britain acknowledge its personnel entered Iranian waters as a way to resolve the standoff. But Britain insisted on Thursday that the crew was seized in an Iraqi-controlled area. A Foreign Office official in London said no admission would be forthcoming because "the detention is completely wrong, illegal and unacceptable and we've set out the reasons why."

It's something I've written about before: the silliness (and ultimately, the depravity) of insisting that the best way to resolve a dispute is to average truth and falsehood in the interest of preserving some kind of bizarre, twisted and ultimately only temporary peace. Iran would like nothing more than to turn this into a he-said-she-said routine and the media, with the intervention of the UN (the ultimate moral tarpit--a venue for averaging tyranny and freedom and calling it peace) they seem to be making headway.

For those with youthful experience on the persecuted end of playground bullying, the weak and ashamed nature of Iran's game should be transparent: take an easy, cheap shot at gaining temporary respect (i.e., hostages). Then insist that the victim (and/or their defender) say something utterly false (e.g., "your dad is a model citizen; he is not a drunk and a felon; your mom is a paragon of vitrue; she is not actually a crack-whore").

The coerced statement is designed (in the bully's mind) to elevate him. Its effect is precisely the opposite. Everyone knows what the poor sod's parents are like. Saying the opposite changes nothing. On one level, everyone feels sorry for him. But in lashing out and insisting on the opposite of what's obvious, he eliminates any sympathy he might have garnered and only makes himself weaker and less respected in the eyes of those around him, exacerbating the shame.

Lather, rinse, repeat... until someone finally pops the bully and sends him crying to mama.

I like Newt Gingrich's solution offered-up on Hewitt's show yesterday: Warn Iran (privately) that in a few days (or a week at most) their single domestic gasoline refinery will be rendered inoperable if the hostages are not released without condition. Then do it. (This is the part the UN crowd usually misses--the doing that confers meaning on all the talk leading up to it.) Surgical air strike, cruise missile, special ops--doesn't matter. Try to minimize casualties and collateral damage but above all, take it out decisively.

Within a few weeks, everyone in the country will be walking and/or riding donkeys. Iran is not a primitive country--except for its leaders' attitudes. They like their cars as much as the rest of us. The long-term vision of the mullahs of returning to the 7th century will thus be accelerated and revealed for what it is--nihilistic, oppressive and reactionary.

Step two: wait for pot to boil over and/or blockade shipping to accelerate things further. Caveat: don't try this 2-3 years hence or the boiling pot will burn a lot more people. What good is our multi-trillion-dollar military if we don't use it? What good is our power leverage and superior civilizational framework if we don't refer to it intelligently and with moral restraint?

UPDATE: It was pointed out to me earlier today that forcing Ms. Turney (Seaman Turney?)--a legal, uniformed combatant--to wear Islamic dress (headscarf) is a violation of the Geneva Convention. As is coercing a letter such as the one she "wrote" to Parliament. Deafening silence from the close Gitmo now crowd. Not that they've ever felt compelled to be consistent.

If a Picture is Worth 1000 Words, This Must Be Worth More

Fascinating, five-dimensional animation/graph depicting the relationship between average lifespan, region, country and national income. Be sure to click 'play' to watch it move through time. Conclusions: the world is not static (though some things are endemic); there are exceptions to prove every rule; the trajectory of an individual life is not the same as that of nations--we confuse the two at our peril.

Iranian Machinations: Sun Tzu Would be Pleased

In between starting up two paying projects, traveling cross-country (and back), helping my older daughter sort through college acceptances (and put into perspective the wait-lists and rejections) and running myself into a quivering, physically exhausted heap in preparation for the Boston Marathon, blogging has not been at the top of my priority list. That said, I feel compelled to blog about the Iranian 'crisis'--if such a surprised-sounding, context-negating label can be applied to something so utterly predictable.

No links here (I'm too lazy and time-pressed to go gather them up. Sorry.) Just some analysis mixed with intuition. Pardon the cryptic form.

First (fairly obvious) thought: the taking of 15 British Navy personnel was no accident. Several sources seem to indicate that this was planned by the Iranian leadership weeks in advance.

Why? No surprise there either: to call a bluff (UN 'sanctions'), to exert pressure (on UN Security Council members), to distract attention (from the fact that UN sanctions finally came about), to save face (excuse for Ahmadinejad to cancel his trip to New York), to up the ante (of the entire conflict), to test Mr. Blair (for any Carter-esque tendencies), to attempt to split the British-American alliance, to give additional fodder to short-sighted domestic (i.e., U.S. and British) opponents of the war, to deftly avoid direct confrontation with the U.S. (but at the same time test our reaction) and finally, to create nationalistic theatre for their domestic audience.

No one explanation needs to be elevated above any other. Their confluence explains why this was a no-brainer for the mullahs. What I find harder to justify (but easy to explain) is why we (i.e., the nominal 'West') seem so stupid by comparison. The way this is playing out makes it seem as if Mr. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts were forced to memorize Sun Tzu and the Art of War from earliest childhood while the rest of us were studying Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Which might not be so far from the truth.

The British warship had to phone home to ask if it could engage with the Iranian ship taking the fifteen sailors captive. Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of sophisticated military hardware sat idle while rigid, hierarchical lines of communication, poor scenario-based thinking (just such a situation could easily have been envisioned and war-gamed well in advance) and just plain poor common sense combined to give the edge to the fast, bold, seemingly arbitrary kidnapping. Would the grandfathers of these Navy sailors pushing boats across the Channel in preparation for D-Day have demurred in the face of a Nazi boat pulling alongside and taking prisoners? I don't think so, and a lack of sophisticated radio communications was not the reason.

There are those on the left who would have us again take the Jimmy Carter softly-softly, turn-the-other-cheek approach (a gross misapplication of Christ's admonition to individuals). I've dealt with that line of thinking elsewhere. If nothing else, it has been empirically proven by past experience--and with this particular regime (if not the individuals who make it up)--to be grossly counter-productive. They understand strength and little else. My first thought on hearing about the capture was whether Blair would choose to be like Reagan or Carter--or, more aptly, like Thatcher or Chamberlain. I like Tony Blair. I really do. Unfortunately he is not the Iron Lady. Fortunately he is not Chamberlain either.

There are those on the right who would have us pre-emptively bomb Iran back into the Stone Age. I read one of those blogs yesterday and was frankly repulsed by the simplicity of the first move and a complete lack of thought to moves two through 'n' after that.

I'll admit to natural sympathy with those bellicose impulses and serious flirting with those ideas. Yet a broad-based pre-emptive attack--as I've said before--is one of the things the mullahs most wish for us to do, which automatically makes it suspect. It would give them a clear and easy cassus belli with their own people as well as on the international stage where many hunger along with them (some vocally; some secretly) for Israel's destruction.

The other thing the mullahs want though, is for us to continue to posture and preen and talk and do absolutely nothing of any consequence--which despite the UN 'sanctions' (watered down to the point of meaninglessness)--is pretty much where we are now. Rock, meet hard place. Not a lot has changed with the capture of the sailors except that Iran has a good deal more information about how our international decision-making processes work under real pressure--which may have been their aim from the beginning.

All of which leaves us with very little maneuvering room--so little that I won't even bother to expound on what I think are the best ways out of it. (I know that may surprise some of you.) There aren't any easy ones, that's for sure--not that human reason can discern. I don't say that lightly. Last year at the IIS I listened to some of the top strategists, military men, analysts and thinkers on all this and they were as tied in knots and at odds with one another as we are now.

What I can say is that a certain tiny, enslaved, half-starved tribe wandering around in the desert of the Middle East 3000-odd years ago managed to get out of many 'sticky wicket' situations much worse than this one--because God was on their side and because they (for the most part, with a whole book full of exceptions and detours) really wanted to do His will.

Which is why, at this juncture in the 28-years-and-counting standoff with the mullahs, I'm really really glad that both George Bush and Tony Blair are praying men. Not just for the cameras but (so I'm told) on their knees alone in the wee hours. I'm happy of course that in addition to that they also have cabinets of advisors and strategists and analysts and thinkers and military men and diplomats. Prayer and thinking were never meant to be thought of as opposites. God gave us brains. We are supposed to use them.

But none of that would matter near as much in a Kobayashi Maru situation like the one we face with Iran if our leaders weren't seeking guidance from above. Because one thing's for sure and that is that the enemy is seeking his own other-worldly guidance and I can't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet it's not coming from the same source.

UPDATE: What was I just saying about foolish naivete and giving aide and comfort to the enemy in the deadly serious games nations play? Who are the Dems trying to impress? No, wait, don't answer that. Sean Penn doesn't count. The other question I forgot to ask in the original post was: Why is it that the folks screaming about violations of the Geneva Convention (at Gitmo--not that it applies to anyone there) aren't now screaming about Iran's "illegal" incursion into Iraqi waters and "illegal" capture of the 15 Brits?

Philosophical bonus question: What would it mean for (say) armed robbery to be "illegal" if all the 'police' ever did was to issue stern-sounding memoranda to the crooks (months or years after the crime) while withdrawing uniformed officers from the neighborhoods in which the crimes were taking place? Just askin'...

Polls, Polls, Who's Got the Polls?

I got back last night from an energy-sapping, heads-down, timezone-hopping business trip that left scant time for sleeping, much less blogging. Yet I was sorely tempted to carve out time for the following. My jaw hit the floor Monday as I picked up the paper at my hotel to find a large picture of an Iraqi man hanging his head under the near-banner above-the-fold headline "Iraqis See Hope Drain Away". I'd read and blogged the ORB poll the day before. How could they possibly spin this out of that? They didn't.

This archive summary of the piece in USA Today hardly does justice to the sucker-punch emotional impact of the front page. Pictures tell stories. Most people don't dig for the statistics. They and the rest of the MSM have been reporting all week on a separate, 'exclusive' poll (as if exclusivity makes it better, more accurate or more insightful somehow) sponsored by USA TODAY, ABC News, BBC, and ARD German TV.

The survey of 5,019 Iraqis that I blogged on Suday apparently wasn't enough. Four hard-line left news organizations had to sponsor their own poll... of 2,212 Iraqis. The poll with the smaller sample size and more downbeat results has so far garnered almost forty times as many news articles as the larger, more upbeat one released first (59 vs. 1,166 citations on Google News). Both used the same rigorous, costly and dangerous methodology: face-to-face interviews.

One would think that--were the media truly unbiased--an independent poll with a larger sample size covering a similar timeframe and using identical methodology would get at least equal billing. Not so. Can you say "smoking gun" for media bias?

To make things even sillier, the press release for the more widely cited (USAT, ABC, BBC, ARD) poll highlights the following findings:

• Two-thirds (68%) [or Iraqis say they] are careful about what they say about themselves to others.
• Fifty-five percents try to avoid passing by police stations and other public buildings, often the target of suicide bombers.
• Fifty-four percent stay from markets and other crowded areas.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, one could get similar results from polling in certain sections of Los Angeles, Washington DC or New York. Such results also fail in one of the most fundamental tenets of survey research: relating current results to a meaningful baseline.

It's certainly interesting that 68% of Iraqis are "careful about what they say about themselves to others" but it's not hard to imagine that the number would have been much higher under Saddam--or perhaps just as high in New York City. If either of those things were part of the USAT poll, they chose not to feature them. The results also beg the fascinating question: why, if the violence is endemic does 45% of the population choose NOT to alter their daily routines? They must be either insane... or insanely optimistic.

On that note, I point readers to this amazing story by Jim Gilbert about one Iraqi man who chose to be upbeat (for the best possible reason)... and paid with his life. One can conclude that he should have kept his head down and bowed to the Islamofascists... or one can conclude instead that we must continue to stand up to them--there now or here later. It's our choice.

Good News Never Sells

Just five articles--three by mainstream media outlets--two by The Times of London (here and here) and one by FOX News--are reporting on the results of a 5,000-person opinion poll of Iraqis recently conducted by Opinion Research Business, a UK survey firm. Five. Think about that for a moment. Major new piece of information about what real Iraqis on the ground think about what's going on there and this new important set of facts and insights is greeted by... crickets.

Contrast that with 771 articles about the recent chlorine gas bomb attack in Iraq and 698 articles about the recent antiwar protests in Washington, DC.

In such a overwhelmingly biased media climate it's no wonder that at the conclusion of a business meeting last Friday an erstwhile partner (devoutly Jewish, no less) concluded with the gratuitous out-of-left-field comment that "Bush should never have invaded Iraq".

As with similar smoke-out questions (e.g., on global warming) by leftie friends, neighbors and acquaintances, I've learned the art of the ambiguous, conversation-ending smile. He's entitled to his opinion. Yet such an opinion cannot and should not exist in a moral or factual vacuum.

One fact that rushes into such a vacuum is this: the Iraqis don't agree.

They don't agree that the U.S. never should have toppled Sadaam. They don't agree that things are worse now than then. They don't agree that their country is in a state of civil war. As the first Times of London article notes (emphasis added):

MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein... the majority [are] optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month. By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias.

I will go out on a limb here and predict the left's reaction to these facts:

1) silence
2) emphasize only the part of the survey that says Iraqis think things will get even better once multinational troops pull out (timeframe unspecified)
3) imply that the Iraqi people are stupid and uneducated and don't know enough to voice a legitimate opinion about what's best for them. (The MSM will be very careful and subtle about this, but the view will be clear.)

Good news never sells.

I'm off for several days of business travel. Hoping to post but itinerary makes it unlikely.

UPDATE (Thurs 3/22): See my update today re. the ABC/BBC/ARD/USA Today poll with a sample size less than half as large as this one that grabbed the headlines anyway (forty times as many citations!) Same methododology; results more in line with MSM bias.

Power and Sex in the Workplace

Interesting factoid today:

Newly released data from the EEOC showed that 15.4 percent of the 12,025 charges of sexual harassment in fiscal year 2006 were filed by men, as opposed to 11.6 percent a decade ago.

I have no doubt that both the top-line number and male % of it are understated. Being largely a perception-based offense however (though often no less real in its effects) such numbers are open to wide interpretation--in either direction. Robbery, assault, burglary, rape and murder (for example) all involve discrete physical (as opposed to largely cognitive/emotional) acts that are a whole lot easier to count and assess.

My other reaction is: I could have told them this.

About fifteen years ago, I was working for a woman a decade older than myself. I was (and am) happily married and she knew this. She was not (and AFAIK still isn't). It was my habit to run from the office most days at lunch (we had an on-site shower). Encountering me alone in the hallway on my way outside one day, she did what I can only describe as a leering full-body visual scan. "Nice legs", she said, pausing to let that idea sink in. "You should come by my office next time."

It all ended there, however I couldn't have known that at the time. It was far from obvious that she was joking or that the invitation was merely a request. My review was coming up. I really needed a raise. She was in a position to give or deny it--or to fire me. The only thing that made it all seem ridiculous was the fact that in our society this kind of thing (female-soliciting-male) is thought of as almost universally welcome by definition. Without any disparagement of the seriousness of more traditional sexual harassment modalities (I have two daughters; I most definitely care about this stuff) what I experienced was clearly a double standard.

Most people's reactions, given our respective genders, were dismissive and I understand that. It was pretty petty in scope and explicitness. It obviously wasn't worth my while to even think about submitting a formal complaint. On one level I was happy for the ego boost--if slightly confused about my boss' motivation and judgment.

Yet on another level I was confused and peeved at the power game the incident represented. Had our genders been reversed, the same exchange would have harbored the potential for a red-flag, sirens-blaring, career-stopping train wreck for the harasser had the harassee chosen to bring it to light. Had I done so, it seems more likely that it would have been my career that was derailed.

If, as the feminists like to say (and correctly so) that harassment is largely about power, then what they're less often willing to admit is that, in many workplace situations today women have it and men don't. (I said 'many', not 'most' or 'all'.) It's not that stereotypical male-on-female harassment has gone away. Instead, what I sense has happened is that a) women have more power as victims than they've ever had in the history of the planet and b) some women have (and choose to exercise) the power of the harasser. If it's all about perception and 'welcome-ness', then male harassees have the right to call it as we see it... don't we?

Overplaying Their Hand, Part II

Last week I quoted a piece at the American Thinker that singled out Al Gore as one of the millstones around the neck of the global warming movement. Here's an expanded excerpt:

Three major factors are responsible for the Green's failure: the weather, Al Gore [and] science... The second factor is something vaster and more certain than mere weather or climate: Al Gore's arrogance.

It can't be said that Al didn't deserve what he got. The revelation that his Nashville mansion uses more electricity each month than the last twelve Olympics (he must have felt right at home among all those spotlights on Oscar night) has struck his halo of Green rectitude a serious blow. Later revelations that his explanation was bogus may well have shattered it. (He claimed to be making up for all that power usage by purchasing carbon offsets.

The problem is that they were being purchased from Generation Investment Management -- chairman, Albert Gore, Jr. In other words, Al was paying Al for the privilege of wasting electricity. It's as if Gandhi had been photographed inside his ashram wearing spats and a waistcoat and sipping Boodles gin. From now on all the little gestures - riding in the hybrid limo, having the private jet pilot sign the carbon offset certificate, and for all we know, touring the North American continent in a solar-powered blimp - are going to look just the slightest bit hollow... What this means is that the Greens will have to cultivate a new messiah.

I also quoted myself from the previous week:

...a big part of the popular attention on Al Gore is due to the fact that he is the Al Gore who--in the minds of many die-hards--coulda-shoulda-woulda been inaugurated in January, 2001.

Now The New York Times is having a go (albeit with double-padded, extra-soft gloves):

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change. But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism...

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists... [who] see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases...

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

Exaggeration? Try telling Eliot Spitzer or the SEC that your company's net assets are twenty times bigger than they actually are and see if they allow you to dismiss it as 'exaggeration'. Same idea with 20X (negative) 'exaggerations' of one's speed when pulled over by the police. Honest officer, I was only going five miles per hour...

Let's be plain: it's lying. Gore and his movie have been doing so aggressively. Definition of a lie: something one knows to be false but which one chooses to defend as true anyway.

The green-leaning IPCC report makes utterly clear--to pick just one example--that 20-foot sea level rises are far far out of the range of any plausible, much less conventionally accepted or scientifically justifiable scenarios for global warming. In any case, it's an interesting choice of words coming from (presumed) liberals--those who were so quick to label as lies what was almost universally accepted wisdom at the time (e.g., Bush on Iraq circa 2002/2003).

What has ensued in the wake of Gore's being called out is a classic liberal spin tactic (though to be fair, they learned it from both Johnson and Nixon): Argue that 1) the cause is just and thus the lies were justified and/or that 2) the messenger may have lied, but the (larger) message is still valid. We're seeing both this week.

On the second point, see Rathergate and the doctrine of "incorrect but true" (or something to that effect--I've forgotten his exact mealy-mouthed words). See also Kerry, John and being both for and against the war--depending on what he thinks you want to hear this week. (Not to mention Bill Clinton, the grand master all-time champion of double-speak triangulation).

Either way, I give tactical credit to liberals for one thing: they are (eventually) capable of recognizing a political liability when they see one. I won't say I told them so.

Hucksterism 101 - If It's New, It Must Be True

This site thoroughly debunks the "Jesus Tomb" scam I wrote about two weeks ago.

Why are we so easily duped into believing in such fantasies? ... “In America we live in a Jesus-haunted culture that is biblically illiterate... But there are also a number of people who, for one reason or another, are just plain skeptical about traditional claims of truth. Oddly enough, “they will gladly listen to new theories, even when there is little or no solid evidence to support them.”

“Another characteristic of our culture is that we have bought into the essential sales pitch which drives our economy,” and hence believe that “new is true.” While new is better than old may apply to dish soap and cell phones, it is a poor way to judge the authenticity of New Testament documents. [emphases added]

Or as I put it last week:

...conservatism (for the most part) believes in the slow acretion of wisdom (much of it implicit in social institutions, e.g., the church). Liberalism by contrast (and also with exceptions) believes in the capacity of clever individuals at any given moment in time to reason their way all the way from good intentions and utopian ideas to workable economics, social structures, governmental forms and public policies even if (and sometimes especially if) those things have no precedent in human history...

Expect more concerted assaults on Christianity in the weeks to come. 'Tis the season. H/T: Carl

What Ever Happened to Readin', Writin' and 'rithmetic?

With a child awaiting college acceptance letters, this article really hit home:

...the UC system's director of undergraduate admissions testified that even if a [high school] course provides all of the material and content expected by the university system, if it is taught from a Christian perspective, the course will be denied for college-prep credit...

Proposed courses rejected by the system include "Christianity's Influence on America," which a UC document cited as "too narrow (and) too specialized" as reasons for not approving the course. Another one was "Christianity and Morality in American Literature." The class was described in documents as an "intensive study in textual criticism aimed at elevating the ability of students to engage literary works." Authors students would have studied included Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin and C.S. Lewis.

Except that "narrow and specialized" isn't the real issue...

The lawsuit also contends that the UC system approves other high school courses "so long as they are not ideologically disapproved or disliked." It cites about three dozen courses the plaintiff's attorneys believe fall in that category, including "Existential Literature," "Gender, Sexuality and Identity in Literature," "Intro to Buddhism," and "Feminist Issues Throughout U.S. History."

Then there's the problem of what is taught once someone gets to UC and why a non-Christian world view might be necessary in order to swallow it:

...the lawsuit lists dozens of other UC-approved courses it contends are "much more narrow and specialized," including "A study of Western Caribbean Culture" and "The 60's: A Closer Look.

Not to mention some other UC system doozies like these:

Queer Musicology at the University of California-Los Angeles explores how “sexual difference and complex gender identities in music and among musicians have incited productive consternation” during the 1990s. Music under consideration includes works by Schubert and Holly Near, Britten and Cole Porter, and Pussy Tourette...

UC-Berkeley’s Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco explores “implications of U.S. imperialism and colonization for the construction of gender in 19th-century San Francisco’s multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic” community. The course also covers “contemporary transgender, queer, genderqueer, and post-queer cultural production and politics” and “the regulation of gender-variant practices in public space by San Francisco’s Anglo-European elites.”

If the left didn't own the academy (and keep in mind that this the University of California is a public institution; many private ones are worse), would secular-left politics even stand a chance? What was it they were just saying about "fair and balanced" out in Nevada?

But if Socialists Do It, It's OK...

This will provide an interesting litmus test for how firmly those in the U.S. who opposed NSA wiretapping of overseas phone calls to/from known terrorists relied on principle vs. politics in coming to their point of view.

Sweden's government presented a contentious plan Thursday to allow a defense intelligence agency to monitor — without a court order — E-mail traffic and phone calls crossing the nation's borders.

Right Principles, Wrong Application

What other two intractably polarized social debates does this remind you of?

If robots can feel pain, should they be granted certain rights? If robots develop emotions, as some experts think they will, should they be allowed to marry humans?

If we apply the template that liberals apply to humans then the answers to these two questions are easy: 'no' to the first; 'yes' to the second. See, that wasn't difficult at all.

Population, Growth and the Myth of the Importance of Now

Speaking of total fertility rate, some fascinating numbers can be found in this piece, even though it soft-pedals the pan-European population implosion so carefully documented by Mark Steyn.

The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid [i.e., myth] whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in the past century, the number of people alive today is still dwarfed by the number of people who have ever lived... slightly over 106 billion people [have] ever been born. Of those, people alive today comprise only 6 percent, nowhere near 75 percent. [emphasis added]

One thought error that has sprung from this myth is the notion that tradition and history are of only limited value in charting a course for the future and that the present is "where it's at". It's the core idea behind Mao's cultural revolution, the Russian Revolution, the hippie generation ("turn on, tune out") and Pol Pot--among others.

It's the idea that in addition to sheer numbers, the collective wisdom of our ancestors is dwarfed by that of people alive today. It's a naturally appealing notion in that it elevates man above where he should be, freeing up any clever person to re-invent society along whatever lines he or she chooses (single payer healthcare, anyone?), with little or no respect for accumulated wisdom, historical evidence (their problems were different, you see; it is only we who are enlightened) or longstanding institutions.

It's a notion that Thomas Sowell deals with comprehensively in his timeless watershed 1987 book, "A Conflict of Visions". Sowell describes how conservatism (for the most part) believes in the slow acretion of wisdom (much of it implicit in social institutions, e.g., the church).

Liberalism by contrast (and also with exceptions) believes in the capacity of clever individuals at any given moment in time to reason their way all the way from good intentions and utopian ideas to workable economics, social structures, governmental forms and public policies even if (and sometimes especially if) those things have no precedent in human history (or even a clear track record of failure--this time will be different! you'll see!)

The myth of more people being alive now than throughout the entirety of human history would have supported the latter (liberal) view. Unfortunately for liberals, it is utterly specious.

Self-Serving Double Standard Alert

When half your political base is eroding and the other half is running over the edge of a cliff, what do you do? Impose Big Brother (W$J subscribers only):

In a largely party-line vote last week, Democrats in the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that rewrites the rules for union organizing by eliminating secret-ballot elections. The Senate is up next. And if you suspect this has everything to do with expanding union membership and nada to do with "employee free choice," we'd direct you to a missive sent to Mexico in 2001 and signed by 16 Democrats in Congress.

The letter is addressed to government officials and concerns "democracy in the Mexican workplace." It reads, "we are writing to encourage you to use the secret ballot in all union recognition elections." It continues: "We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose."

Five of the signers have since left Congress; the other 11 voted last week for the Employee Free Choice Act. And by the way, the letter's lead signatory is Representative George Miller of California, who also happens to be the lead sponsor of the House bill. Which means the same person lecturing Mexican officials on the primacy of secret ballot elections has been heading up the effort to end them for 140 million U.S. workers.

Big Labor's problem is not that Americans aren't free to organize but that more and more are choosing not to. Today, just 7.4% of the private-sector workforce is unionized. That's down from 20% as recently as the 1980s. Reversing this trend is a top union priority. Labor leaders made it clear to Democrats that, in return for political support in last year's election, they wanted a vote on legislation that would make organizing much easier. House Democrats have now delivered, but don't let them fool you into thinking this has anything to do with "free choice."

Libertie, Egalite, Fraternie... and Jack-Booted Government Censorship

This should make the transition to sharia law in France that much easier in a few years:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday... its decision... came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991...

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. [emphases added]

Cherish our First Amendment. It is a rare and beautiful thing.

UPDATE I: I was struggling earlier to find some contextualizing statistics for the above remark about sharia law. They come from Mark Steyn's excellent book "America Alone":

Page 34: Muslims are 30% of the under-30 population in France, 45% in major urban centers

Page 53-54: Total fertility rate in France (2005) is 1.89 (TFR is # of live births per couple; 2.1 is replacement rate. In other words, France's overall population sans immigration, is declining.)

For comparison, the TFR in ultra-rich Saudi Arabia is 4.53(!), disproving the liberal assertion that affluence is the primary driver of reduced fertility. Cultural differencees play a bigger role. The U.S. TFR is 2.11.

One third of all births in France are Muslim.

So, add up a somewhat higher (and perhaps dramatically higher) birth rate for Muslims than for non-Muslims in France (the over-30 population is less than 30% Muslim and yet Muslims of any age account for 1/3 of overall live births) with a longstanding immigration trend (both legal and illegal) coming almost exclusively from Islamic countries and it's not hard to see--as Steyn claims more broadly for Europe in general--that Sharia Law in France is but a matter of time. At which point the idea of journalism being a government function will seem perfectly sensible to the French mullahs elected to run the place. If Mr. Kerry had any credibility at all about France being an ally four years ago, it seems unlikely that he'll be able to make even that much of a case ten or fifteen years hence.

UPDATE II: Prager is covering this story now (12:35PM EST)

Hey, Let's Cool the Planet!

That way, I can enjoy even more opportunities for frostbite and pay higher taxes for the privilege! This evening's wind chill chart is at right. It was even worse this afternoon when I was walking the dog. It's March! Brrr!!!

For new readers, KM lives in a blue state. Today, quite literally so.

Overplaying Their Hand: The Global Warming Bubble Bursts

Great piece over at American Thinker just out today on how and why the latest chapter in the global warming campaign has failed to capture the beachead it was seeking. Money quote: "Of course, weather is not climate - but the distinction is irrelevant, as far as public attitudes are concerned."

Clearly, something went wrong. If the campaign had been a success, [the UN policy prescriptions last week] would have been covered, all right - as much as the IPCC summary and then some. Al would have been at the UN. So would Hillary, Chuck, and Nancy, more than likely. There would have been speeches, and plenty of them. Parked SUV's would have been trashed all around Manhattan. Somebody would have pointed out that Turtle Bay would in short order be twenty, or forty, or sixty feet underwater.

None of that happened - the unveiling of the grand solution was a complete washout. (And what was the solution? Umm... carbon taxes and... I forget.) With a failure as abject as this, there's no simple means of recovery. The entire effort to sell anthropogenic global warming will have to be redone from scratch. Look for another buildup when the actual IPCC report is released sometime this Spring. It's a good thing they can't do the Academy Awards all over again. Three major factors are responsible for the Green's failure: the weather, Al Gore [and] science

As I said last week: "...a big part of the popular attention on Al Gore is due to the fact that he is the Al Gore who--in the minds of many die-hards--coulda-shoulda-woulda been inaugurated in January, 2001". To which my response is: Get a life. It's 2007. Quit whining and trying to create a world socialist government and instead start working on fielding a responsible candidate who can win the White House and not, having done so, sell this country to China or Saudi, abandon it to Mexico or let the jihadists destroy it.

The whole thing lately has been less about global warming per se and more about the left finding a way to feel better on the long, uncertain and often bumbling march to November, 2008. It's been a way to focus their collective attention on something they can feel self-righteous about in the short term that doesn't involve a reactionary withdrawal from Iraq that only Pat Buchanan could love. For a moment in time they were able to say: Nyah, nyah, you can't run for a third term and we'll always hate you, Mr. Bush. Well, OK then. Now can we get back to fighting and beating the jihadists?

Hard Wired for God?

A fascinating, informative piece worth reading in the Sunday NYT despite its irritating and perhaps inevitable oversights [emphasis added]:

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

...belief in a noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth.

This is certainly true in the United States. About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”

The article raises a host of questions for me. Among them:

• Why is Creationism (a theory of origin) viewed by so much of the scientific--and for that matter the religious--community as antithetical to, rather than complementary with Darwinism (a theory of process)? My theory: the increasingly 'siloed' (i.e., narrow, specialist) nature of what used to be an attempt at synthesis in the university setting makes it virtually inevitable that something is zero-sum when it is anything but.
  
  
• If "hard-wired to believe in God" is one of the hypotheses in play (and it seems a quite reasonable that that would be so given the neurological, pyschological, socio-cultural and other scientific evidence), then why is it less-than legitimate to theorize in a scientific setting that the hard-wiring was the result of a divine hand? (Whether by instantaneous miracle, e.g., when Cro Magnons split off from Neanderthals, or by the divinely known outcome of a God outside of time who saw how evolutionary processes would play out well before He let them.)
  
  
• If 92 percent(!) of the population believes in God, how did we come to allow atheists and agnostics to become so strongly influential in so many of our important institutions? (universities, the media, entertainment, the courts) And why is that kind of outcome right and just in a democratic society? My theory: in that 92 percent is a large fraction who have made religion too personal--a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy. That leads to acquiescence in the face of secular zealots much more determined to have their religion triumph than we are to defend it. Religious traditions with much longer and better established track records for building and sustaining stable, peaceful societies. They can (ironically) lay stronger claims based on evolutionary theory itself to having evolved through social processes to a state of wisdom closer to absolute truth. (That last is an assertion on which I'd welcome cogent comment.)
  
  
• As someone who majored geology in school (and thus had reason to study paleontology, and with it evolutionary biology) it has never struck me as in the least bit irreconcilable--since coming to faith anyway--to have God placing in man a capability/receptivity that would cause us to long to know and be with Him. We have been working very hard this past century to ignore that gift, deny it, or explain it away as a useless vestigal appendage. The results of having done so speak for themselves in the horrors of the 20th century, the desperate unhappiness of the human soul behind the veil of material prosperity and in the mestasticizing evil still on the march in the world because history didn't end in the 1990s and human nature didn't change.

What Was That They Were Just Saying About Consensus?

No doubt this will kick off a series of baseless claims by the global warming zealots that the media is slanted to the right and hopelessly in the pockets of oil companies and "corporate interests".

‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans. The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world’s poor. Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2. Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn. "I think it will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists – people with qualifications – are the bad guys." [says director Michael Durkin]

If it were true that this was just big-money corporate propaganda, why did it take ten years to get funded? Channel 4 (UK) blurb on the show here. Unfortunately, it's UK-only. Eager to hear from UK readers about it when it airs on Thursday. Of course the whole thing will probably be on YouTube before it's even done airing... Watch this space.

Forgetting the Lessons of History

Der Spiegel fawns over the evergreen liberal illusion of a "third way" (this time in China), failing to understand that: 1) present trends never continue, 2) Communism doesn't work, and when it appears to for a time, it is just as evil and repressive as when it does not, 3) human nature is immutable and 4) neither culture nor race obviate man's God-given right to liberty.

Hardly a day goes by on which Asia's giant, Red corporation does not report new and dazzling business figures. And the more helplessly Western heads of state -- from United States President George W. Bush to German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- attempt to reform their traditional market economies, the more enviously the capitalist world eyes China's frenzied growth, all the while asking itself: Does communism work after all?

Dazzling it is... but then so was Enron. Apply GAAP and it falls apart tomorrow. Get me a bucket.

Election Predictions

I went on record with a few friends about this today so might as well do it here also. Not that it's exactly controversial, or the result of deeply analytical thinking or proprietary knowledge but...

Hillary will not get the Dem nomination. (Her nasty streak--reflected also in her advisors--will come out more visibly, while her myriad enemies will be emboldened in a self-perpetuating cascade.) My only question is whether she tries to take it all the way to the convention and use her considerable favor/blackmail bank to turn a primary loss or plurality into a divisive floor fight.)

Obama will blow up too. (People will realize that he has a thinner resume even than Edwards, a voting record well over into Teddy K la-la land, and that skin color--of any hue--plus good looks and speech-making ability are hardly qualifications in and of themselves. His bloom in the MSM is way too early to be sustainable.)

Who steps in to fill the void on the Dem side? I don't know, but the early MSM saturation/fixation on the Dem side is going to do them more harm than good--at the least giving the Republicans ample time to formulate counter-strategies and file away material to work with.

I also crystallized something about Romney that may be utterly obvious but it's the first time I put it all together: He will run and enjoy great success (I'm unwilling to predict his nomination) based on having fought the good fight against the pseudo-European pols here in Massachusetts. It's the inverse of the old 1972 anti-Nixon bumper sticker: "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts". Romney's twist: "Trust Me: I Fought Massachusetts". I do know one thing for sure from a conversation this morning: liberals here absolutely detest him--with a level of blinding vitriol I would never have suspected.

Now here's an interesting (though dangerous) scenario: McCain and Lieberman each run as independents, splitting the race four ways. It would make Florida 2000 look like a picnic.

It'll Be a Cold Day in H*ll

Two weeks ago Dennis Prager noted that the ratio of cold-related to heat-related deaths in the UK in any given year is 10:1, or 20,000 versus 2,000. I haven't been able to track down Mr. Prager's original source, but he piqued my curiosity. If it's true in Britain, might it be true elsewhere? It appears that it is, as this heavily footnoted NIH document makes plain [emphases mine].

Mortality in Britain is lowest when the mean daily temperature is 17-18°C. The number of heat related deaths per year, obtained as the number of excess deaths on days hotter than this, has averaged around 800 in recent years. Most of those deaths are of people over 70 years of age, and most occur in the first day or two of a period of high temperature...

According to some predictions heat related mortality will increase drastically as global warming develops, but recent evidence is relatively reassuring. Heat related mortality is similar in hot and cold parts of western Europe and in hot and cold parts of the United States. This implies that the populations of hot regions have adjusted by physiological or other means to their hotter summers. In Britain annual heat related deaths are in any case far fewer than cold related deaths, so that the initial effect of increased temperatures all year round, [even] before such adjustment, would be to reduce net annual mortality.

Based on this, Prager's ratio may even have been conservative. The estimate for annual cold-related deaths in the UK is 20,000... versus 800 for heat. Fifteen to one. And that excludes deaths due to influenza and other seasonal illnesses that--despite what all of our mothers told us--aren't statistically correlated with climatic conditions.

Prager is at the very least stating the consensus of the medical community: all other things being equal, extremes of cold (deep, sudden and/or prolonged) kill more people than extremes of heat. It is true both short and long term, e.g., when we look at the expansion or retreat of human populations over centuries and millennia. (In those longer-term cases food scarcity issues come into play in addition to the increases in storminess and general weather volatility associated with colder climatic periods). The NIH piece continues [emphases mine]

Analysis of actual changes in heat related mortality during global warming since 1971 is even more reassuring. Despite rises in mean summer temperatures of at least 1°C in southeast England and North Carolina heat related mortality has not risen in southeast England and has virtually disappeared in North Carolina. The latter represents something more than adaptation as it could prevent the mortality rising with higher temperatures but could not make it fall. The likely explanation is the increase in air conditioning (from 57% to 72% between 1978 and 1997) that has occurred in households in that region of the United States and is in turn attributable to increasing prosperity.

Those are increases in prosperity that Gore's $553 trillion in proposed spending on global warming would bring to a halt and probably roll back. Unfortunately, after laying out these facts, the article goes off into non-sequitor never-never land saying, in essence, that just because there isn't any evidence of a problem (and in fact is strong evidence against it being a problem) doesn't mean we ought not to do something about it.

Hunh?

It's hard for me to figure out what isn't obvious about this. If deaths from cause X are ten times those from cause Y and we reduce deaths from X by 10% while increasing deaths from Y by 10% there are fewer deaths overall. A lot fewer. In fact, if one follows this simple algebra, then a general rise in average temperature would be expected to reduce overall deaths from temperature extremes of any kind whereas a general decrease in average temperature would increase deaths.

Sure the curves may be non-linear as we get to extremes, but even the pessimists agree: we're not going there. The earth has been hotter. Under those conditions, humans thrived and expanded. Sure there are probably local, temporary exceptions. But it's hard to overcome a 15:1 ratio with anecdotal evidence. (Doncha remember that day last August when uncle Bert had a coronary trying to put in his window air conditioner?)

A scan of the literature, even the global-warming-friendly stuff, seems to indicate that at worst, death rates from heat are only slightly less than those from cold. The case is still clear.

Let's make this more even concrete. You are Al Gore. (Sorry. This will be quick.) You're standing in a big lecture hall, filled with 1,000 people. Let's make it even more fun and pretend that it's the Oscars--all those anorexic actresses shivering in skimpy dresses make it even more realistic. In front of you on the podium is a thermostat. You know that if you turn it up by (say) five degrees, one person will die. If you decide to turn it down by an equal amount however, 10-15 people will die. What do you do? Well, if you're Al Gore, it's obvious: you turn it down. Why? Because half the audience is cheering wildly for you to do so.

The whole scenario is reminiscent of those psychology of authority experiments they did in the 1950s where subjects went ahead and 'electrocuted' an actor subject in the other room on the authority of a scientist telling them it would be OK.

This is a variant of the inability of policy-makers and the general public to make rational trade-offs based on actual morbidity and mortality statistics in unrelated categories. I.e., in a rational world where the goal was to prevent death, much of the sturm and drang over gun control would be directed at swimming pools. (They kill far more people each year than do guns). In this case it ought to be easier because average warming means less cooling. (My young niece got this one well before she went to pre-school.)

But we do not live in a rational world. When a scientific hypothesis is believed to be true based on the number of Oscars it garners, we have up and moved to Wonderland. Off with her head!

I ask again: What is the moral case for halting a trend likely to reduce death and famine?

Climate Change Policy Contradictions

[Scroll down for Friday updates]
The BBC reported last weekend that:

The UK has the highest number of avoidable deaths due to winter cold in Western Europe. Before the latest prices rises, Age Concern predicted that more than 20,000 people over 65 would die between December 2005 and March 2006 from cold-related illness in the UK... The government has set a target of 2010 to eradicate fuel poverty among the vulnerable - the elderly, households with children, or people who are sick or disabled.

So let me get this straight: Al Gore wants to solve the problem of poor elderly people dying of cold by increasing the price of fuel (via a carbon tax) in hopes of cooling the planet. Come again? Yet the EU itself (which, one would think, would tend to side with the world government folks like Gore) admits on the public health portion of its website [D'oh! link added Sat. nite] that:

Deaths during heat-waves have received much media attention in recent years, and yet cold weather is even more lethal. Heart/respiratory diseases and strokes claim more lives in cold weather.

So--for those who insist that climate change is a primarily moral issue--tell me again 'cause I'm a little slow: why is it that attempting to cool the planet would be a desirable thing?

UPDATE I (Friday Noon): I was just thinking, as I watch the freezing rain come down in buckets here in Boston: Would the global warming zealots (in the United States at least) bring nearly the same fervor to the issue if the man most visibly leading the charge did not personally embody their deep and protracted bitterness at having lost the White House in 2000 by a slim margin to a man that many equate with Adolf Hitler? I don't think they would. Two thought exercises prove that out:

1) There are plenty of individuals on the left with public profiles and environmental credentials at least as strong as Gore's. None of them are leading this. Why?

2) If Al Gore had spent the last five years of his life pushing hard on some other issue (say, women's rights, or AIDS in the third world, or hunger or poverty or national defense, or cultural depravity in music lyrics or any number of other things that he and others on the left--and the right--have pushed for at one time or another) would he still be a media darling out of all proportion to his power and expertise?

I think it's fair to speculate that the answer is yes, and solely because he is a symbol of a course for this country that might have been but thankfully wasn't. In short, a big part of the popular attention on Al Gore is due to the fact that he is the Al Gore who--in the minds of many die-hards--coulda-shoulda-woulda been inaugurated in January, 2001. It's the same crowd that sports '1-20-09' bumper stickers (Bush's last day in office). Thank goodness things turned out the way they did instead.

UPDATE II (Friday after lunch): Planets (plural) warming. Better tell NASA it's going to need to cut back on those gas-guzzling CO2-spewing Mars Rovers.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Which points out something we skeptics have been trying to say all along that's based on the most basic, elementary physics: CO2 concentrations are a lagging, not a leading indicator of warming. It is why CO2 concentrations march in absolute lock-step with warming in Gore's movie despite myriad other variables that should make their correlation much much noisier.

Take a soft drink (or beer) out of the refrigerator. Open it. Let it sit at room temperature for awhile. Put your CO2 sensor over the mouth of the container. Note the increase as the gas is released from solution due to the temperature increase of the fluid. Same principle with the sublimation of solid CO2 (aka 'dry ice') on Mars.

After a long series of qualifications kow-towing to the global warming mandarins, the National Geographic continues:

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said. Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets... "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

Apparently and ironically, the Russians aren't as scared as many American and European scientists appear to be about toeing the party line... at least on this. Meanwhile Der Spiegel claims it has exclusive leaked copies of the IPCC science volumes to be released in April or May or whenever the UN gets around to it once they're brought them into line with the already released sensationalist political summary. Thing is, I blogged about this almost a month ago, after downloading the 206 megabytes of 'exclusive' material myself.

I ask again: Is this any way to 'do' science? I.e., 'exclusive' leaks to friendly media outlets, data held back until it is scrubbed to conform with political findings,? If this were about, say, differences in brain structure based on gender or sex preference, the consciousness of persistent vegetative state patients, or about when a fetus can feel pain and experience his/her surroundings and the papers were leaked to a right-wing media outlet while being held back from public release for months there would be an unholy uproar in the MSM such as we haven't seen in years.