thealligator414

If is't too hot - it's Global Warming!

Too cold? Global Warming.

Snowing in the Middle East?? Global Warming.....

Or hell freezing over?

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090125/NATIONA...

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.”

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

Now all you AGW alarmists can begin trashing this man and his reputation. The status quo when presented with someone arguing against man-made global warming.

Read it all:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/27/james-hansen...

So maybe the Global Warming Alarmists can explain this data:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GRAYCYCLES.JPG

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Contrast_tracks_ea...

In the quarter-century period from 1945-1969 when the globe was undergoing a weak cooling trend, the Atlantic basin experienced 80 major (Cat 3-4-5) hurricanes and 201 major hurricane days. By contrast, in a similar 25-year period from 1970-1994 when the globe was undergoing a general warming trend, there were only 38 major hurricanes (48% as many) and 63 major hurricane days (31% as many). Atlantic sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity is related to but does not necessarily follow global mean temperature trends.

What made the 2004 and 2005 seasons so unusually destructive was not the high frequency of major hurricanes but the high percentage of hurricanes that were steered over the US coastline.

Oh, but let me guess, none of these 650 scientists are "credible".

Or perhaps they are "Fake Experts"? Part of a "conspiracy theory" of GW "deniers"?

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=...

Perhaps someone here on Yahoo Answers that believes humans are causing Global Warming can go through this list of scientists and discredit them. Or prove that their credentials are lacking or altogether fake?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1045687.html

Can this be true??!! The horror all of you Left Wing, antiwar, anti-Israel folk must be feeling upon this nugget of info!

How can this be? I thought that on Jan.20 2009, the world community is supposed to join hands, sing and dance, and pronounce the beginning of a new era of Peace and Prosperity for all???

I thought Obama was going to sit down with the Mullahs and make them understand with his sweet words and smooth voice?? Why would Obama need to make such a policy? Is there really any chance that Obama diplomacy can fail??

Is this the policy of the Left-Wing Progressives' Savior and Messiah?

And wouldn't it make much more sense to use conventional means to eliminate the possibility that Iran goes nuclear? Rather than letting Iran get a nuke, and THEN make it policy to NUKE Iran if they attack Israel???

Bruce Anderson in The Independent:

Anderson writes: “Excessive benevolence is much more to blame than excessive greed.” Going on to elucidate that “In the late 1990s, a Democrat-controlled Congress virtually compelled US banks to advance mortgages irrespective of the applicants' financial status. Racial factors played a role in this; a large percentage of sub-prime borrowers were Black or Hispanic. But everything was underpinned by economic optimism. The assumption was that the economy would just keep on growing, so that even the poorest families could have their stake in the American dream.”

Certainly, blame should be apportioned to many individuals outside of the US government, but the fact remains that the nascent cause of the current trouble was anti-redlining laws instituted in the US in 1977 and strengthened in 1995, along with the enormous expansion of the money supply that took place under the auspices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (backed by the Department for Housing and Urban Development). Even as the severity of the credit bubble was becoming increasingly evident, such socialistic polices were advocated by many in Congress, suggesting that poorer people should be given even more opportunities to borrow.

Bad government policies sowed the seeds that made this current crisis. It is time that the press at large acknowledged this, instead of confusing cause with effect. Government’s must learn their lesson and not be allowed to introduce such utopian policies again. Once again the problem was too much government, not too little.

That oil is at $80 a barrel???? And what happened to all that doom and gloom about $200 a barrel oil??

Supply and demand baby!

They can go out and get it. Of the 45 million people without health insurance, how many go without life insurance because they CHOOSE not to?

Watch:

http://reason.tv/video/show/560.html

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself Thursday from its $800,000 payment linked to the liberal ACORN organization, which is under investigation in several states where it is suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations.

Federal Election Commission reports show ACORN-affiliated Citizens Services Inc. got $832,598 from the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote work during the primaries.

Obama is clearly lying when he claims ignorance about Ayers's terrorism, but even if you wanted to pretend otherwise, it is impossible that he was in the dark about Ayers's revolutionary leftism: Ayers has never made a secret of it and can't seem to help himself from mentioning it about every 30 seconds. Obama not only knew about Ayers's views in this regard; he obviously subscribed to them: was a member of the Chicago New Party begun by the Democratic Socialists of America; he worked closely with Ayers on "education reform" for years, he approved of Ayers's similarly fringe-Left views of the criminal justice system's treatment of juvenile crime, and, we are learning; and he was tightly aligned with ACORN, which he and Ayers funded and whose practices fit comfortably with the Ayers view of "participatory democracy".

Up until the housing bubble burst, I didn't hear anyone complaining about the practices of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Etc.

I didn't hear anybody question H.R.4682 Community Reinvestment Act which basically said, "Banks will lend money to people that will never repay you."

How many of you demanded that your 401K NOT be invested in the hedge funds or financial institutions that dealt with these mortgages?

How many of you called for a repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley? How many of you criticized the lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

And how many of you have contemplated the alternative to a 700 Billion dollar bail out? Would you be better off with ALL of these banks and financial institutions FAILING?? Have you thought about the TRILLIONS of dollars in losses if this were to happen?

This bail out may just be the best of many really bad alternatives. This problem needed to be addressed 10 years ago.

Personally, I am against this bail out. I am appalled that Republicans are going along with this - no questions asked.

To quote Mussolini, “the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”

Finally, all of you "Bush is a fascist" people may actually have a factual example. Of course that makes all the members of Congress that vote in favor of this bail out - Democrats and Republicans alike - fascists as well.

This is what happens when we let companies get too big to fail. Antitrust anyone?

My savings are insured up to $100,000. I rent an apartment. I have no stocks or 401K to lose value. Oil is down to $90 a barrel. McCain is up in the polls. The NFL season is underway.

Things are looking good.....

Let's put this in perspective:

The $14 trillion of GDP in the U.S. is a LOT of economic output. $14 TRILLION!!!

That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four largest (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

If California were a country, it would be the world’s seventh or eight-largest economy.

New York has a GDP equal to that of Russia. Texas' GDP - which is half of California's - is equal to that of Canada. Tenessee equal to that of Suadi Arabia.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us...

Based on 2006 data, New York City - CITY!!! - had a GDP larger than Brazil! San Francisco had a larger GDP than IRAN!

The U.S. economy grew by almost 6% (in current dollars) in the third quarter of 2007, and by 6.6% in the second quarter (on an annualized basis). In dollar terms, that translates into $200 billion of additional economic output in the third quarter of 2007 (or $800 billion on an annual basis) and $217 billion in the second quarter ($868 billion annually).

Given the ridiculously large size of the U.S. economy ($14 trillion), what does each percent in nominal GDP growth translate to, in terms of that amount of additional U.S. economic output compared to the size of various national economies? Here is how it breaks down:

1% of current-dollar annual growth in U.S. GDP ($140 billion) would be the equivalent of adding the entire economies of either the Czech Republic ($142b) or Israel ($142b) to the U.S. economy.

2% growth would be like adding Denmark's entire economy ($276b) to the U.S.

3% growth would be like adding more than Turkey's entire economy ($401b) to the U.S.

4% growth would be almost like adding the entire Dutch economy ($660b) to the U.S.

5% growth would be almost like adding the entire economy of Australia ($755b) to the U.S.

6% growth would be like adding Mexico's economy ($840b) to the U.S.

7% growth would be like adding Russia's entire economy ($985b) to the U.S.

Keep things in perspective folks.

Maybe Vlad jumped the gun on global domination. Without oil wealth and petro dollars, Russia is just another assbackward quasi-communist 2nd world nation with a third-rate military.

“The fundamental issue is oil. Russian oil companies are not producing more so their earnings are dependent on a rising oil price,” said Daniel Salter, analyst at ING. If the oil price falls, then earnings downgrades are in the pipeline for these stocks, he added.

State-backed bank VTB tumbled 33 per cent to Rbs0.03 and Volga Telecom sank 28 per cent to Rbs37.

Russian shares suffered their steepest one-day fall in more than a decade on Tuesday, losing up to 20 per cent, as a sharp slide in oil prices and difficult money market conditions triggered a rush to sell.

The heads of the Russian central bank, the finance ministry and the financial market regulator met on Tuesday night for an emergency discussion on ways to halt the crisis.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said on NBC’s “Today” show: “Our tax plan would take that tax cut of another $130 billion that John [McCain] wants to give to people making over $250,000 next year, not let it go forward and give it to the middle class — the very people who desperately need it to stay in their homes, to buy food, to take care of the gas, to fill up their tank, to be able to go out and buy a toaster."

Awesome....Le'go my Eg'go, Joe!

A chicken in every pot...and a toaster in every kitchen! Obama/Biden '08!! Woo hoo!

Joe Biden: Hell of a guy!!

Barrack Obama has never fought in a war. or Fired a gun. Or piloted a fighter jet.

I'll chalk this battle up as a win for John McCain.

Sarah Palin seems to have truly unhinged more than a few, eliciting a stream of vicious, often misogynist invective.

You'd think that, whether or not they agree with her politics, feminists would at least applaud Mrs. Palin as a living example of one of their core principles: a woman's right to have a career and a family. Yet some feminists unabashedly suggest that her decision to seek the vice presidency makes her a bad and selfish mother. Others argue that she is bad for working mothers because she's just too good at having it all.

So much for "sisterhood".

http://bp1.blogger.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SEquGdespvI/AA...

Anyone with common sense can see that the minimum wage increase is dangerous in two ways:

1. Warm fuzzy feelings for the working poor- "Golly, I'm poor and look at what the Democrats are doing for me! They must really be concerned!" Except that the economy resets itself in short order and they end up being in worse shape in the long run.

2. Creating the new poor from the middle class. If minimum wage “Employee A" who is mildly competent receives a compelled, arbitrary, raise, there is less chance that “Employee B" who is a stellar performer will receive any more than the same. Also, “Employee C" who makes a couple of dollars more will also need to get a raise, but because there is only so much money to go around, will get a much smaller raise, percentage wise, and so will fall closer to the minimum. And then, because everybody's hours are cut and fewer overtime hours are allowed, there is less money at the end of the pay period. All because some politicians want to seem "magnanimous" while using other peoples' money.

Accoding to BLS data on unemployment rates by age, it looks like almost all of the .50% increase in May unemployment to 5.5% from 5% in April was due to increases in the jobless rates for young workers in the 16-24 year age group, especially the 16-19 year group (see chart above). For workers 25 years and over, the jobless rate has remained pretty stable at around 4%, compared to large increases from April for 16-19 year workers (+3.3% to 18.7%, the highest rate since 1993) and 20-24 year olds (+1.5%).

In nominal dollars, there will be a 41% increase in the minimum wage, from $5.15 per hour in 2007, to $7.25 per hour in 2009. In real, inflation-adjusted dolars, it will be a 25.5% increase, and will be the largest 2-year increase in the real minimum wage in at least 50 years (see chart below). And this HAS to have an adverse effect on employment of teenage workers.

http://bp1.blogger.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SE08s8aLo4I/AA...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SMU0c6b0-RI/...

The creation of politically popular biofuel mandates by many of the world’s biggest farming nations has been particularly disruptive. U.S. law, for instance, requires that ethanol make up at least 5% of vehicle fuel (rising to 22% by 2022), and 30% of U.S. corn went toward ethanol production last year (see chart above, with slightly different data).

The U.S. government has claimed that biofuel demand is responsible for only 3% of the increase in global food prices over the past year. But a recent World Bank report estimated that figure to be 75% once the resulting economic changes, such as shifts in land use, are considered.

High prices hurt poor, import-dependent nations the most. The price hikes of the past three years threaten to push 100 million people back into poverty, according to the World Bank, erasing seven years of progress.

Last time I checked, nobody drinks or eats crude oil...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SMbnBIYn-nI/...

The budget deficit in 2008 of $407 billion will be 2.86% of GDP, which is nowhere near record levels (see chart above). There have been 18 years (1968, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 2003 and 2004) when the budget deficit was larger, as a percent of GDP.

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.xls