Random Readings

First Item:

Not believing in the greenhouse effect, I mean global warming, I mean "climate change" is not a kook-fringe position. Even some of the authors of the UN's climate reports don't believe it.

See this story.

By the way, have you noticed how the problem has morphed over the years?

I remember reading all about "The Greenhouse Effect" in elementary school and junior high. A specific, verifiable problem with a specific, verifiable mechanism driving it, which turned out to specifically not be happening.

Next, we heard about global warming. A specific, verifiable problem with a vague mechanism driving it, that turns out to have happened for about 30 years, but now . . . not so much.

Enter "climate change." This may be a winner. This is the real "change we can believe in" Both the problem and the mechanism are vague enough that no one can disprove them. Earth gets warmer = climate change! Earth gets colder = climate change! Every honest person, when asked "is the climate changing?" must answer "yes." Then the yelling about the horrors of capitalism, the evils of SUVs and the poor polar bears starts, and no one listens to the rest of the answer (from the article):

what do I believe about climate change? Firstly climate change is real, and has occurred on Earth for at least 4 billion years as long as an atmosphere and oceans have existed. Climate change occurs in cycles at various time scales, with the shorter time scales known as weather (by convention the distinction is 35 years). Trying to stop or control climate change is akin to stopping ocean tides. Secondly, I believe human activities affect climate, otherwise why would I bother with a mortgage. The climate inside my house is different to the climate that would exist if my house were gone.

Second Item:

Maryland has done us a service by demonstrating the effects of a huge tax increase on "the wealthy." The Wall street Journal has the story here.

Basically they raised the tax rate on those making over $1 million dollars a year. Here's what happened:

The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it." One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Huh, who'd have thought? As the article explains "this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions."

Global Warming Alert! III

Don't you hate it when the world just refuses to cooperate with your political agenda?

NASA has been caught falsifying global temperature data again. Amazingly enough, this error also made it appear that global temperatures are rising. Huh, seems like all the errors are only in one direction. Weird.

On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So it's not like they're arguing over "warmest" vs. "3rd warmest." So, how did this happen?

The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

So, September was the warmest October ever, amazing! Most disturbingly:

last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Strangely enough:

The figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

This type of statistical blindness is evidence of either malicious intent, or rank incompetence and lazy fact checking from seeing exactly what you expect to see, and not questioning it.

Here are links to the blogs of the two scientists who are policing Hansen's stats.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

http://www.climateaudit.org/

Global Warming Alert! II

In my previous post I listed several cold weather events which were all no doubt just amazing coincidences, and not any evidence against global warming.

After all, a few incidents do not a climate make. But what if it was more like a whole year of data, and not just from one or two places, but from say the entire continental United States.

BEHOLD:



But, one year does not a climate make. There has to be some kind of trend. Okay, how about 10 years. Surely over ten years, CO2 and temperature would increase together, right?



Ok, so the global average temperature hasn't increased in 10 years, it's decreased. We're talking about a long-term trend here. let's look at the last 600 years. Surely man hasn't been impacting global climate any longer than that:



The correct temperature line, the darker one, shows that it was much warmer 600 years ago than it is today. This is obvious from history. Grapes grew in England during the 12-15th centuries. the Vikings colonized Greenland. They only left because of global cooling. If Greenland is warming today, it isn't the first time.

What's my point?

Global warming advocate always pick their time frame very carefully.

It's usually from the 1940s to 2000. (leaving out the warmer 1930s and the cooler 2000-2008) That temperature graph show an increase. As I've shown above though, pick a different time and you get a different result. You start to see the forest, not just the trees.

Are some areas warming? - YES. Are some areas cooling? - YES. Is the climate changing? - YES. Has the climate ALWAYS changed? - YES. Is today's climate ideal? - no one knows, but it certainly isn't unprecedented, unusual or out of control.

A good resource to counter all the hype is found here.

The "Work Spouse"

I remember hearing, and telling jokes about someone having a "work spouse." All in good fun, right?

Apparently CNN believes that the phenomenon is real enough and serious enough to warrant an advice column on managing the "work spouse" relationship. Because, after all, no human interaction is so straightforward and uncomplicated that it can't be micromanaged to death if enough psychologists put their minds to it.

Don't know if you have a "work spouse?" You're not alone. Many people have one (or more) work spouses, and don't know it. Luckily, CNN has a quick and easy seven point test you can take to see if you have a "work spouse."

(I can imagine the rationalizations for a positive test result: "it can happen to anyone." "It's no one's fault, really." "When working together in close quarters, work spouses happen." "Don't feel stigmatized, work spouses cut across all racial and economic lines." "We just need to raise awareness . . ." blah, blah, blah)

If you discover that you have, inadvertently, acquired a work spouse - don't panic, you can manage your condition. CNN knows what to do:

Keep the lines of communication open. Make sure that other co-workers are not feeling shut out by the perception that you and your work spouse are an exclusive clique of two. If you are working on a project together that also involves the team, be sure to reach out to everyone for feedback and suggestions.

In other words, be promiscuous in your work relationships, exclusivity leads to jealousy, "Make 'work love' not 'work war'" in that giant corporate commune that is the office.

Avoid crossing boundaries. It's great to have a support system and a close confidante, but be sure to set boundaries for how much to share with your office mate. More importantly, honor those boundaries. If the relationship becomes antagonistic or is too close for comfort, let your work spouse know you need a little space.

Avoid crossing boundaries!?!? You mean like thinking of co-workers as your "spouse?" That kind of boundary? And if the relationship is destructive, by all means take "a little space" don't end it. You can make it work, 'work divorce' is not the answer!

Lighten the mood. If your life at home and at work is filled with complications, bringing a co-worker into the middle of those issues may not be beneficial for you. You should aim to keep the mood light and happy with your work spouse. You'll look forward to enjoying gossip, taking breaks and being able to relax with a friend without any concerns or complications.

Relaxing with a friend without any concerns or complications is the purview of a REAL spouse. if you are more relaxed at work than at home, then you need to seriously re-evaluate your life.

I kept hoping to see some evidence of humor in the article, but I didn't. That fact both scares and saddens me.