I’m anxiously awaiting the next 9 months of this election cycle

Posted by: aaaa | Mar 5 2016 21:14 utc | 3

Someone mentioned a few days ago that Pat Lang supported the ‘intervention’ in Libya. I don’t read his site often (only when linked on other sites). Was this a one-off thing, or does he make a habit of endorsing embarrassing things and then never talking about them again after it all goes to shit?

Posted by: Plenue | Mar 5 2016 22:00 utc | 5

○ Secr. Clinton’s Embrace of Erdogan and Muslim Brothers

Posted by: Oui | Mar 5 2016 22:19 utc | 7

“Pat Lang supported the ‘intervention’ in Libya“
Pat Lang is no friend of mine, he used to blog @BooMan Tribune …
○ NYT & Patrick Lang Beating the War Drums ¶ Exacerbates Fear of Iran

Posted by: Oui | Mar 5 2016 22:29 utc | 9

Israel demolishes Palestinian-owned homes in West Bank

Israeli forces have demolished dozens of structures, including a school, in the northern West Bank this week, leaving 10 families homeless, according to a new United Nations report.
In as statement issued on Friday, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid said the demolitions took place on Wednesday in the village of Khirbet Tana, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank.
In total, 41 buildings were destroyed, displacing 36 Palestinians, including 11 children, the UN said.

Just another day in the genocide of the Palestinian people … by the rabid fundamentalist sect of doG’s chosen people.
Netanyahu gov’t is implementing annexation of West Bank as secret but official policy

Last month we at Yesh Din published our new position paper, “From Occupation to Annexation,” which deals with the way the Israeli government is implementing the conclusions of the Levy Commission Report [in Hebrew] without any public debate or even an official government decision – an implementation which is dragging Israel into de facto annexation of the West Bank, one that does not grant the annexed their rights.

Look, over there, in Syriaq! Wahabist NAZIs!
Look, over their, in Ukraine! Resurgent Ukrainian NAZIs!
Nothing to see here. No Fundamentalist Jewish NAZIs … just us eternal victims, suffering as best we can.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 5 2016 23:29 utc | 11

to be fair I said on yahoo news early on that the ‘rebels’ should maybe be provided with weapons to libya and syria,so long as USA stay out of it..
The Arab Spring hijack by USA/NATO was very very stealthy and optimally promoted. Don’t forget that Russia and China did not veto the actions on Ghadaffi, so maybe they were even caught off-guard by it like I was. To what extent the Libyan uprising was real/co-opted is beyond me, but in hindsight it was 100% military op by the West.

Posted by: aaaa | Mar 6 2016 0:09 utc | 13

@12 I just enjoy the captivating (and addictive) insane drama of it all.. If human psychology were different, the likes of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein would be president, and the humanity + the biosphere would be in a much better situation

Posted by: aaaa | Mar 6 2016 0:33 utc | 15

The technology that now surrounds us is not just a harmless toy; it has also made possible undetectable and untraceable manipulations of entire populations – manipulations that have no precedent in human history and that are currently well beyond the scope of existing regulations and laws. The new hidden persuaders are bigger, bolder and badder than anything Vance Packard ever envisioned. If we choose to ignore this, we do so at our peril.”
Full article:http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-mind-control-subliminal-stimulation-controlling-people-without-their-knowledge/5511628

Posted by: ben | Mar 6 2016 0:54 utc | 17

I found this to be an immensely charismatic interview. I hope you enjoy the rare pleasure of seeing a fine mind illumined by passion and moral character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI3doCKhI7Q&ebc=ANyPxKoelbUtoaHuQl9ypjMtdfHe45A_h5ZhUx6mv_Ghn9wBCV2u_0FbmgwtOMkJWIMFcgm0ExId-QY0QNKWx7ojKj4cCOX01Q#t=8.121

Posted by: Penelope | Mar 6 2016 2:00 utc | 19

Jackrabbit @ 20,
To find out who he is you must listen for yourself. Someone else’s
thinking won’t do. You are really missing something. Some people
correct their errors, you know.

Posted by: Penelope | Mar 6 2016 2:57 utc | 21

Jackrabbit @ 20 If you want to figure out why anthropogenic CO2 climate catastrophism is still being strongly pushed, including by people who should KNOW better, you need to $$follow$$ $$the$$ $$money$$. See https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzMX2DBEiI08&h=QAQGW5ON7. Financial corruption of science is not unique to climate science…..
I also recommend the LaFramboise 50-1 interview, to show the great depth of misrepresentation of climate science framing.

Posted by: metamars | Mar 6 2016 3:38 utc | 23

Warming, or no warming, the fact remains, human activity is destroying the planet. We need to make changes.

Posted by: ben | Mar 6 2016 3:40 utc | 25

@10
“I did get booted off his blog some years ago for taking a position on the Vietnam War with which the colonel vehemently disagreed”
Was your position that it was an insane, unjust war against the Vietnamese people and amounted to genocide? There was no war IN Vietnam, it was a war ON Vietnam.
@19
@20
David Evans, another engineer who thinks he’s a scientist. He isn’t, much less one with a degree in anything remotely related to the climate.
It amazes me how people who aren’t simply payed to spout bullshit (and there are plenty of those) will prattle on about how the climate isn’t changing. Hello? Hottest year running for multiple years in a row? Ice cap melt is now self-sustaining? Anyone? Bueller?
Two summers ago I outright canceled my camping trip to normally mild climes part way through because it was literally too damn hot to do anything. It’s only gotten worse since.

Posted by: Plenue | Mar 6 2016 4:04 utc | 27

@aaaa
“Don’t forget that Russia and China did not veto the actions on Ghadaffi, so maybe they were even caught off-guard by it like I was. To what extent the Libyan uprising was real/co-opted is beyond me …”

R2P
“What matters,” said Ambassador Power at the Invisible Children gala, “are results – everything else is just noise.” But what matters are well is ideology and power – who gets to define what is a crisis and who gets to frame the actions necessary to solve the crisis? In 2005, through US pressure, the United Nations adopted the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. One of its champions was Samantha Power. The R2P doctrine holds that a state has the legal responsibility to protect is people, and if this state fails to do so the international community must involve itself with “coercive measures” such as economic sanctions but with military intervention as “the last resort.” In other words, the R2P doctrine is endowed with the ability to conscript Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which forces the United Nations to use military force. But, as has become obvious over the past few decades, the idea of the “international community” is not as global as it seems–that term has come to reflect the views of the North Atlantic countries, whose military hegemony through the US armed forces and its tentacular base structure as well as NATO gives them the ultimate veto over the narrative of world affairs. What matters, then, is not suffering in general, but the suffering deemed by the North Atlantic states to be against their interests, to whose defence the bombers are set loose.
Last year, India’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, Hardeep Singh Puri, offered a robust criticism of the R2P doctrine from this general standpoint. Puri pointed out that the United Nations used the doctrine “selectively,” and when the United Nations selects a conflict for intervention, the armed phase is immediate rather than “calibrated and gradual”. The selectivity is a function of those who continue to exercise their power through the UN bodies, which is to say that the North Atlantic states set the agenda for the use of the R2P doctrine. Puri’s criticisms come in the wake of the Libyan intervention, which Obama, Rice, and Power use as the standard for the use of R2P. However, many powers, including the BRICS states, are wary of that usage. They argue that the United States misled the Council and then misused the UN Resolution 1973, a feint that forced UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to publically defend the NATO action in December 2011. It is because of the way the R2P was used in Libya that it the BRICS states have indicated that they will not allow such an open-ended R2P resolution, including for Syria. Power comes to the United Nations stepping over the rubble of R2P.
[Source: The Konyism of Samantha Power by Vijay Prashad ]

Posted by: Oui | Mar 6 2016 4:21 utc | 29

Ben @ 25
I’m retort with this link. A long but a good read.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
,

Posted by: Forest | Mar 6 2016 4:43 utc | 31

Climate change. I was persuaded by the evidence several years ago. Since then I’ve seen Snowden, and a whole portfolio of false flags, and an entire history of the world that I’ve had to re-examine. So I’m willing to learn that climate change is a hoax. But dammit, someone is going to have to explain the Arctic’s melting to me.
When we see false flags and manipulated scientific and other institutional smokescreens, it all has a certain feel to it. The science around climate change doesn’t have that feel, it has the opposite feel. It feels like the truth is brutally apparent, and there’s a rearguard action being fought the same way the nicotine interests delayed for at least a decade the tipping point of mass awareness that tobacco causes cancer. And as we know, the same people are involved in this delaying action.
But Putin has said that climate change is real. I don’t have a link, it was during those bad wildfires they had a few years back. And Russia is moving into the Arctic’s newly melted waters like that world is going to be around for a while.
It occurs to me now – pondering the old question of, whom do I trust? – that I’d like to see the Russian science on climate change. That might give me some answers.
~~
I have one other comment on this matter that I might as well include here. I was also a believer in Peak Oil, until I read Engdahl’s exposition of the Russian theory of hydrocarbon origin, the abiotic theory. And this I can give a link to:
Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer
A lot of people are really bummed, I suspect, by the concept that climate change is occurring right at the same time as peak Oil – so we don’t even have spare energy to help us accommodate the climate changes (e.g. with air conditioning, as one basic example). But now I know we do have the energy. This gives hope.
My working prognosis right now is: climate change is real, but Peak Oil is not (except to the west with its unproven fossil origin of hydrocarbons) – energy supply has by no means peaked.
This means we have a margin, a cushion, of perhaps a few generations, for the damage to become visible, and the tipping point of awareness to be reached. And then we’ll need the best minds that Russia and China, India and Iran can supply to help us re-calibrate human society’s footprint on the planet. I’ll be long dead – although as a Buddhist I expect to be here anyway in some capacity – and this one falls to newer generations than mine.
So there is room for hope and change. Same as always, ever has been.

Posted by: Grieved | Mar 6 2016 4:59 utc | 33

Some good links re climate change
Lies, Damn Lies, and Global Warming Statistics
Harvard Professor on IPCC and Scientific Integrity
Top 6 Climate Change Problems
A HREF=”https://youtu.be/5c4XPVPJwBY/”>Why Global Warming Failed and Climate Change is Real

Posted by: Colinjames | Mar 6 2016 5:25 utc | 35

19, 20, 25, 33
Everyone has acknowledged by now that the ‘97% of climate scientists’ meme was a Madison Avenue lie,
the ‘97%’ was determined long ago by advertisers could sell ‘fat free’ hydrogenated oil as ‘butter’.
The actual number is closer to 300 climate scientists, paid by PACs to cook their hockey sticks.
Everyone has acknowledged by now that the earth has seen NO warming for the last 19 years, even Mann,
the statistician turned hockey-stick Gore-wannabe, in the mode of James Hansen, astronomer turned to
Gore-boy ‘climate scientist’, who was forced to retire from NASA for violating the US Hatch Act against
government officials taking $1M awards for using their government position to push PAC agendas. He did.
The final straw for intelligent observers should have been the ‘Deep Ocean Eating the Heat’ memeing,
when there are only a 100 or so operating marine weather bouys, not evenly deployed around the world,
and none deployed to the depths claimed by The Climate 300 as a heat sink for the world’s atmosphere.
The Artic ice cap is melting because it’s floating on the Arctic Ocean being warmed by the Gulf Stream.
There is no correlation with this melting to CO2 levels, still more rare than xenon in the atmosphere.
Global deforestation and desertification is causing more desertification and skewing air temperatures,
just as the current grain fields burning in India and South Asia have blanketed the entire region in a
thick, dense, choking smoke, as can be followed any time you like with the Himawari 8 satellite loop:
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=himawari-8/full_disk_ahi_true_color&width=800&height=800&number_of_images_to_display=30&loop_speed_ms=100
This is directly related to their access to fossil fuels, machine cultivation and fossil fertilizers,
but the solution is NOT to place CBOT a Carbon Tithe on fossil fuels to starve 3 billion campesanos.
The world’s defense (sic) apparatus burns more fuel than all the world’s commuting public. There’s
one place to start. And that defense (sic) apparatus is being used to disenfranchise natural and
free resources (as plant patents under TPP) from the people, then log off the last rain forests,
and reduce the earth to a dry sandbox, with Coca-Cola owning all the drinking water monopolies.
There’s the real problem. Fossil fuels don’t kill people, Defense-State Wehrmachts kill people.
‘Climate Change’ is a shuck and jive and an iron hand in the velvet glove theft of your rights.
Everything you have or hope to have has derived from the golden wealth created by oil and gas.
If you want to know what your world would be like without oil, I encourage you to watch this:
https://youtu.be/Uwo5rjiIEsQ

Posted by: NoReply | Mar 6 2016 6:25 utc | 37

Lang is as he is. he has a valid point of view. You like it or you don’t. I see b continues to comment there, even though his comments are taken badly. Lang is getting old, and more cantankerous, but he does have a valid experience in the ME, and he should be listened to, to a degree.
Posted by: Laguerre | Mar 5, 2016 7:17:50 PM | 14
Pat Lang is a Soldier of Fortune-style self-obsessed info manager.
SST reminds me of Niqnaq in that both PL & RB write stuff, invite comments, and then argue with commenters with whom they disagree – before silencing the ones who are better at winning arguments than the blog owner. There’s no point whatsoever in going to SST (or Niqnaq) to participate in a wide-ranging debate because wide-ranging debate is Strictly Verboten.
If such bloggers were truly interested in “debate” they could (but wouldn’t) raise a contentious issue from the comments, write a post about that issue and throw it open to debate. But that would spoil the whole point of running a Trog Blog.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 6 2016 7:23 utc | 39

@Hoarsewhisperer
Agreed!

Posted by: Oui | Mar 6 2016 7:39 utc | 41

Yuck, his former Chinese wife was more beautiful. Until Tony Bliar hit her.

Posted by: Nick | Mar 6 2016 8:03 utc | 43

Oops, my bad, Harper gave the above speech in Canadian Parliament but did not become PM until ’06…

Posted by: Bluemot5 | Mar 6 2016 8:56 utc | 45

31
And this link, and quick read:
http://imgur.com/RowkUOL

Posted by: Chipher | Mar 6 2016 9:14 utc | 47

@ NoReply 37
Hmmm. I think I shouldn’t have used the term “error bars”. Rather, I was suggesting that the uncertainty due to relatively miniscule sampling was ginormous.
The oceans hold 79.3 billion gallons of water, half that is about 40 billions of gallons, and you sample 4,000 locations, simultaneously, means that 1 sample point per 10,000,000 gallons.
A “drop in the ocean”, if you’ll pardon the pun….

Posted by: metamars | Mar 6 2016 9:46 utc | 49

Clinton continues winning only in former slave states LOL.
…
Haha the Aussie ex-CIA asset Murdoch is getting desparate!
Posted by: Nick | Mar 6, 2016 2:31:39 AM | 40
Yikes! Hope you’re right.
It’d be fun if Trump donned a pith helmet and cracked a whip, and a few Stockholm Syndrome jokes, whenever Hillary’s name crops up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 6 2016 10:32 utc | 51

Good map. http://www.agathocledesyracuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Syria-img-2-Dec-2015.jpg
Syrian army advances on Palmyra and Raqqah. Citizens of Raqqah may have risen up and seized control of five neighborhoods there.

Posted by: fairleft | Mar 6 2016 11:34 utc | 53

An anonymous troll commented thus:
”
Fossil fuels don’t kill people, Defense-State Wehrmachts kill people.
‘Climate Change’ is a shuck and jive and an iron hand in the velvet glove theft of your rights.
Everything you have or hope to have has derived from the golden wealth created by oil and gas.
”
The above is RUBBISH! Fossil fuel(s) destroy whole ecosystems…. mountaintop removal in Appalacia, wanton destruction of Amazonia, destruction of Gulf Fisheries, destruction of Alaska’s littoral, heavy metal pollution of atmosphere, lakes, and streams, destruction of the pickerel fishery………
All for nothing!
Today 28% efficient triple junction PV with power densities > 250 watts/ sq meter, cost $0.25/watt, giving rooftop systems costing $1 /watt not including storage and $2 / watt with storage.
Our research shows that conversion to 100% renewable power is feasible using current products, and thus creating a carbon neutral economy.
Missing are the feed-in tariffs necessary to finance the transition. All the rest is window dressing.
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W. Oprisko | Mar 6 2016 13:04 utc | 55

Turkish police storms the headquarter of the turkish newspaper Zaman in Istanbul. This is an escalation in the confrontation between premier Erdogan and the turkish Fetullah Gülen movement.
http://video.dailytelegraph.com.au/v/441832/Turkey-Police-storm-Zaman-HQ-in-Istanbul
http://shoebat.com/2016/03/05/turkish-police-raid-headquarters-todays-zaman-newspaper-president-erdogan-takes-one-step-towards-consolidating-absolute-power/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3478230/Shameful-day-free-press-Turkey-Police-fire-rubber-bullets-tear-gas-crowds-protesting-forced-country-s-largest-circulation-newspaper.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/12183516/Fears-grow-after-bestselling-opposition-newspaper-seized-by-Turkish-authorities-in-court-ruling.html

Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 6 2016 13:28 utc | 57

40;Yeah,you stole my thunder;Queen of the slave states!And the MSM won’t say a word about the obvious antisemitism of the southern black voter!She is electoral toast against Trump,but if the rep scumbags sandbag Trump,she’ll best crazy Cruz.But Sanders is obviously the stronger dem candidate.He wins dem states.
And Cruz takes rep caucuses,undemocratic closed loops of rep insiders,in Maine(Bush country)and Kansas.

Posted by: dahoit | Mar 6 2016 14:39 utc | 59

So, what do American Muslims think about The Donald?

In a recent poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), he was favored by 11% of registered Muslim voters — more than the rest of the Republican field combined.
Marco Rubio was second at 4%, followed by Ted Cruz at 2% and John Kasich at 1%.
Hillary Clinton leads all candidates with 46% support, followed by Bernie Sanders at 25%.
..
Sixty-seven percent of respondents identified as Democrats, while only 18% said they were Republicans. Ten percent declined to answer.

Posted by: virgile | Mar 6 2016 14:46 utc | 61

jfl at 60. i really don’t know. your intuitions are plausible. such a viper’s nest of conflicting forces and interests with few clear reports…

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 6 2016 15:09 utc | 63

Dr George@55
Although I have long supported solar and wind power as less polluting sources of energy they are not carbon neutral they just require less carbon emissions to produce and operate. Their growth will require more mining, manufacturing and the pollution and destruction all industrial processes require.
Today with the rapid growth of these energy sources they are only supplying a portion of the energy for the growth in demand for energy and have not replaced any fossil fuel power production. Even with the projected growth rates of their introduction they may not be able to do more than meet increasing energy demand.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Mar 6 2016 15:49 utc | 65

Erdogan’s action to let the police storm (& occupy) the Zaman newspaper won’t go down too well in Washigton DC. Erdogan is behaving too independently from the US & NATO. That’s why I still expect that Erdogan will be removed/deposed etc. from power in the (near/distant) future and he could/will be replaced by someone from the Fetullah Gülen movement. A more loyal sockpuppet for NATO & US will/can be selected to become premier of Turkey.
I don’t know what the Fetullah Gülen “movement” thinks turkish foreign policy should be. But I assume that Gülen has the same view on what the relationship with the kurds should be. And what happens with the relationship between the/ALL kurds and Turkey in the (near/distant) future is IMO key for what happens to Turkey’s future. If that relationship sours too much then it could/will rip Turkey apart, with all the geo-political consequences for the Middle East.

Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 6 2016 16:14 utc | 67

I think the US will sacrifice the kurds again in order to support Turkey. But when the economic situation in Turkey deteriorates (much) more then I also think it could rip up Turkey into 2 parts: a turkish part and a kurdish part. But that also depends on how weak/strong the US and the european economy are/will be in the near/distant future.
In other words: There’re A LOT OF moving parts and it remains to be seen where all those moving parts will move to in the future.

Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 6 2016 16:40 utc | 69

Hmmm. I think I shouldn’t have used the term “error bars”. Rather, I was suggesting that the uncertainty due to relatively miniscule sampling was ginormous.
The oceans hold 79.3 billion gallons of water, half that is about 40 billions of gallons, and you sample 4,000 locations, simultaneously, means that 1 sample point per 10,000,000 gallons.
A “drop in the ocean”, if you’ll pardon the pun….
Posted by: metamars | Mar 6, 2016 4:46:08 AM | 49
Thanks metamars that you refuted the global warming hoax in a clear and understandable way that all of us who do not now a zilch about statistics can accept. However, some pesky minority actually passed one or more stat courses and they know that the size of the “total population” does not matter when you want to estimate the average of some quantity with sampling. Closer to our more usual discussions, polls estimating popularity in USA and in a particular state have to have roughly same sample size. But at least one hoax can be revealed: Argo DOES NOT, repeat, DOES NOT, have 4000 probes, the latest figure on their website was 3916.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 6 2016 17:12 utc | 71

My last work on global warming for a while: my beef with politicians who focus on that are that they arrive at corporate friendly solutions that do not help much. Simple carbon tax and invisible hand would steer people toward effective solutions to use less fossil carbon. At the regressive nature of such a tax should be balanced with flat/progressive distribution of proceeds, e.g. healthcare, public transit etc.
=====
Erdogan’s action to let the police storm (& occupy) the Zaman newspaper won’t go down too well in Washigton DC. Erdogan is behaving too independently from the US & NATO. That’s why I still expect that Erdogan will be removed/deposed etc. from power in the (near/distant) future and he could/will be replaced by someone from the Fetullah Gülen movement.
Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 6, 2016 11:14:40 AM | 67
Quite wrong in many ways. Erdogan’s AKP is putting dots over i and dashing t’s to make complete description of a fascist party. Not metaphorically fascist like “feminazi”, or somewhat figuratively fascist like “fascist Trump”, but a good solid fascist movement with brutal cult of force, witch hunts, property confiscations, demolishing cities “of their own people”, so far concentration camps are missing but the prison population is skyrocketing. Opposition media that are still operational are used as symbols of evility to rally the supporters. Their language is increasingly brutal, and so are their actions.
But since when is the “West” opposing fascism? The issue of Turkey being “too independent” can be nipped in the bud without any drastic actions like coup d’etat. To some degree, Erdogan having some fun with black flag operations, gun running and human trafficking does not contradict any NATO priorities, and when he wants to go “out of reservation” he is simply stopped with a word of friendly advise (most recently, delivered by a minister from the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which Erdogan perceived as a slap in the face, and that probably was exactly intentional). And at home, as long as a state remains “one of ours”, Western alliance is fully “Westfalian”.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 6 2016 17:42 utc | 73

P@70
I think the first research paper warning of the coming effects of AGW caused by rising CO2 concentrations was produced by a Russian in the 1960’s. At that time there was the belief that the earth should be heading into a cooling cycle based on climate data from ancient ice cores and glaciation cycles so this report was ignored.
AGW deniers such as Metamars are conflating politics, NWO and Big Green Business with measured scientific results showing what has already happened and why. They are correct about the political manipulation and opportunism and agendas of some powerful forces but their so called science stinks.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Mar 6 2016 18:15 utc | 75

@76 Your conclusion is the premise of much discussion here, ie what will be the next steps in this Great Game V2.0 or “Tournament of Shadows” as the Russian called it..

Posted by: Lozion | Mar 6 2016 20:38 utc | 77

@73 PB. ‘ But since when is the “West” opposing fascism? ‘
Good to see it in print. Your last paragraph is a concise statement of the Clinton/Bush/Obama presidencies. Now it’s more like ‘ since when is the “West” opposing any depraved behavior at all? as long as a state remains “one of ours” ‘ Nothing lies beyond the pale any longerm it’s been embraced and extended to encompass every vile perversion.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 6 2016 22:05 utc | 79

jfl @ 32, Good grief. Do you not already KNOW that gas and petroleum are primary?
I suppose you think they are secondary to dead dinosaurs. Go read Wm Engdahl or
the Russians on abiotic oil.
You’re sure there’s no such thing as primary water just by the SOUND of it, right?
There are two wells right her in CA & I’ve been to one.
“Global Resource Alliance
This organization, working with the hungarian ‘water wizard’ Pal Pauer, has drilled over 80 boreholes to primary water at various depths, in Tanzania, installing handpumps that enable villagers to have easy access to clean water that is free of disease causing microbes, parasites, and surface contaminants” http://www.globalresourcealliance.org/

Posted by: Penelope | Mar 6 2016 22:22 utc | 81

@77 bm
I understand what you are saying but I see things differently now. IMO the window of opportunity for intervention is closing and Turkey/KSA’s hesitations are sealing JAN/ISIL’s fate. I think we came really close in the last couple of weeks for such folly but thanks to clever diplomatic maneuvering coupled with massive support in materiel and logistics from Russia, unless the use of a false flag type event happens I dont see how the terrorists will survive by year end.. Yes we know the TPTB’s thirst for regime change is untarrissable but frankly what can they do? I think they came to the conclusion you can’t beat a chess master so they are refocusing on partition/federalisation etc. but lo & behold the Kurds seem to be on them and may have just decided to take the weapons but support Damascus..

Posted by: Lozion | Mar 7 2016 2:27 utc | 83

re: Lang
dh | Mar 5, 2016 5:28:27 PM | 8
Oui | Mar 5, 2016 5:29:40 PM | 9
barrisj | Mar 5, 2016 5:57:45 PM | 10
Laguerre | Mar 5, 2016 7:17:50 PM | 14
I’m with y’all. Specifically, I’m with you Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 6, 2016 2:23:13 AM | 39
IMO Lang is a pompous, self-promoting blowhard who has such severe tunnel vision he couldn’t find his way out of a WalMart parking lot with a GPS. Best thing I ever did was to realize that and move on. The blogoshpere is full of tyrants that tolerate no contrary opinions. Richard Silverstein, Juan Cole, Phil Weiss, Annie Robbins, “Taxi” – they all filter out any comments that don’t resonate with their own echo. It’s a type of fascism, but the way they filter comments tells you they are also filtering the information they post so that it conforms to their world-view. If I want content-filtered information, I can go to the NYT. The irony is that my world-view is mostly aligned with many of these bloggers; I just can’t tolerate their censorship. Reading comments with ideas and information contrary to mine is how I learn things.
– – – –
ben | Mar 5, 2016 10:40:46 PM | 25
“Warming, or no warming, the fact remains, human activity is destroying the planet. We need to make changes.”
Thank you, but it’s too late. Please proceed to the life rafts.
There is only one green problem: too fucking (literally) many human beings fouling the planet with their own offspring and with nuclear, chemical, and gene-modification tech – resulting in too few resources to go around. Back in the 1960’s there was an idea called “Zero Population Growth.” You don’t hear about ZPG anymore because all the hippies grew up eventually, took showers, got jobs, and realized how badly they wanted to keep populating the earth with cutsey, bouncing babies. Cutsey bouncing babies are the enemy, which is to say testosterone, oxytocin, and visions of motherhood.
There is now so much biological inertia behind the human population explosion that a species crash is inevitable, unless an asteroid gets to us first. ZPG, even if it could be attained today worldwide, wouldn’t be enough. Serious negative population growth is the only hope in hell of “managing” the species crash. If we can get back to 3 billion without crashing all the way to 0, given the tech we now have and given the lessons we will have learned the hard way, we should be in good shape.
Did I say “we?” Barring reincarnation, I won’t be here, which raises another unspoken issue: If reincarnation is for real, we’re all f*cked.
– – – –
Plenue | Mar 5, 2016 11:04:38 PM | 27
“Two summers ago I outright canceled my camping trip to normally mild climes part way through because it was literally too damn hot to do anything. It’s only gotten worse since.”
This reminds me how back in the 1970’s during a cooling period of the earth, climate scientists were saying we were headed back to the ice age. Changes in global temperatures are so highly variable it is not possible to discern a trend based on a few years of data. In the 1990’s I recall listening to Rush Limbaugh, king of the idiotic short-view. He was in NYC and it was so cold that particular day it was setting all time records. He was freaking out about how that day proved “global warming,” which is what “climate change” was called back then, was a left-wing hoax.
Using personal experiences over a day, or a couple years, or even a lifetime as evidence for or against climate change is ludicrous. The earth has been warming over-all since the end of the last major ice age, 11,000 years ago, and because of that trend it is inevitable that there will be back-to-back years that are the warmest ever recorded. If the past is any indication, regardless of whether humans are here or not the globe will continue to warm up for another 50,000 years until the next glaciation begins.
– – – –
Dr. George W. Oprisko | Mar 6, 2016 8:04:52 AM | 55
“ Fossil fuel(s) destroy whole ecosystems…. mountaintop removal in Appalacia, wanton destruction of Amazonia, destruction of Gulf Fisheries, destruction of Alaska’s littoral, heavy metal pollution of atmosphere, lakes, and streams, destruction of the pickerel fishery………”
WTF?? Fossil fuels don’t destroy anything. They are not agents; they are not animate; they don’t have arms, legs, brains, and cell phones dude; they don’t burn themselves. They just ride around in their railroad cars or tanker trucks until someone like you pulls out his credit card and pumps them in their car’s gas tank.
It’s not fossil fuels causing all that havoc, it’s the fucking (literally) homo saps – predominately wealthy Western homo saps, the white ones – who derive real, tangible benefit from the energy they (homo saps) release from fossil fuels.
Let’s stop with the personification crap and look the problem in the face, which requires a mirror. You can put solar collection systems on roofs all you want but all you’re doing is rearranging the deck furniture as the species sinks under its own weight. And here I am back to testosterone again.

Posted by: Denis | Mar 7 2016 2:38 utc | 85

The NRA meets its Waterloo in West Virginia, as a new no-permit concealed-carry gun law goes into effect before Independence Day, and now every bank teller, bartender, strip club hostess, DJ and nightclub bouncer can sue their employer, the State and the NRA for reviving the ghost of Deadwood.
Now everyone waiting in a grocery store line, ATM line, airport ticket counter, sports franchise and liquor store can rest secure in the knowledge that at any moment, without warning, some crazy-ass drug-addled 21 year old on Adderol and Benadryl is gonna to start shooting up the place, followed by a veritable hail of green-on-green crossfire, then followed by helicopters, SWAT teams and hearses.
Well, the hearses come later. First they have to pose the bullet-riddled corpses in their coffins, to see if any relatives are missing kin and want to pay for the funeral. Won’t it be great to be a silver-haired senior or an attractive single-woman walking alone at night?
The NRA is proving single-handedly the one basic tenet of Buddhism is false: No Duality?! HA!!
Soon there will only be the Quick … and the Dead. Oh, and the politicians, lawyers and judges.
“Fill yor hand, pardner. Ah’m itchin’ fur a gun fight!”

Posted by: Chipnik | Mar 7 2016 3:07 utc | 87

55 and 56 Opreshko and Arnold are clearly the same PAC paid troll, playing call-and-response soto voce in his junior-college dormitory, alternately banging RUBBISH on his cell, and then staring absently out the window at the college girls and their sweaters, a thin dew forming on the faint whisp of his mustached lip as a moan escapes his lips. Basura! Basura!

Posted by: Chipnik | Mar 7 2016 6:50 utc | 89

@ Penelope 46
Regarding the money trail…
for a starting point to get a quantitative sense of financial disparity, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/01/follow-the-money-why-heartland-is-a-big-threat/ It’s a “starting point”, because, as with Heartland’s budget, NASA, DOE, NOAA and NSF’s budgets don’t all have to do with climate change.
As for anectdotal evidence, I’m not going to dig up quotes, but Richard Lindzen and William Happer have spoken or written about how framing research proposals in a manner friendly to catastrophic AGW makes it easier to get $$$$, or “makes life easier” (Lindzen). Although I’m nobody famous, I can also tell you that I got into a conversation with a fellow basketball player at the Princeton YMCA, who told me about interviewing scientists or physicists for positions, and asking them about specific climate related research claims in their resumes. When he’d ask them “what does this have to do with climate”, the answer was basically “nothing”. He told me he’d had about 6 such individuals in this vein.
If you want to hear the sound of crickets, you can ask your local, passionate CO2 catastrophist “Do you agree or disagree that interviewing retired scientists with relevant domain knowledge in climate science, is a good way to ferret out more truthful opinions about how dangerous human CO2 production is, compared to non-retired (with the worst candidates being young scientists who don’t have tenure.)
The answer is OBVIOUS, which, I believe, is why “true believers” that I’ve posed this question to, almost always ignore it. God forbid that they even indirectly encourage somebody to do such research, or even tacitly acknowledge that science CAN be corrupted due to career and $$ concerns.
You can also check out:
Articles by Denis Rancourt and David F. Noble at http://climateguy.blogspot.com/ re the peer review process, etc.
Lectures by Tim Ball on his newish book “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”
See also
“The Trouble with Physics” and “Not Even Wrong” (and learn what a “string theory mafia” is)

Posted by: metamars | Mar 7 2016 14:45 utc | 91

@ Penelope 46
Some more money angles:
James Hanson’s ah-h-h-h “fortuitous” compensation: (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/dr-james-hansens-growing-financial-scandal-now-over-a-million-dollars-of-outside-income/)
“NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.”
Michael Mann (author of the craptastic hockey stick graph; Happer has called this “one of the most discredited graphs in all of science history”, which even the IPCC has dropped; evidence continues to accumulate, at a rate of about 6.6 : 1 on papers saying “hotter than today” vs. “cooler/same than today” that the Medieval Warming Period was not just warmer then, but also that this was a worldwide phenomenon) making $10,000 speech. (ref: http://mediatrackers.org/florida/2013/01/16/climate-alarmist-michael-mann-charges-10000-speaker-fee) (MWP ref: http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/globalmwp.php)
MWP is another crickets-inducing argument (generally). CO2 catastrophists love to blame humans for most of climate change, and will typically minimize natural variability. But if it’s cooler now, and humans have RAISED global temps by about 1 deg C, that means that the ‘non-human’ (thus naturally induced) global temperature WOULD (likely) have been an additional degree cooler than it’s height during the MWP. However, that creates an even BIGGER temperature difference that a non-pathological scientist would look to understand, and explain. CO2 catastrophists like to pretend that climate science is a “settled science” (not the “messy science” that Judith Curry has convincingly argued for), so discussing such a gross contradiction to their fantasy worldview is something to be avoided. At least, that my working theory regarding their MWP crickets.
The mega$$$ involved with carbon trading has been written about by Matt Taibbi, and Lubos Motls had a column, a few years back, about how a carbon pricing decision by a European body resulted in a multi-billion $ flow of revenue. Sorry, I don’t want to look up links.

Posted by: metamars | Mar 7 2016 15:20 utc | 93

US Drone Strikes Kill 150 People in Somalia

A U.S. drone strike in Somalia has killed more than 150 people, U.S. officials have told the BBC.
A U.S. official told NBC that the group was conducting “some kind of ceremony” when it was attacked by unmanned U.S. drones.

Wonder whether it was a weddding? or a funeral? Unaffected by lame duck status, our Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is still “really good at killing”. No amount of sarcasm can in any way comfort the families of the murdereous war criminal’s victims. He keeps ratcheting up the blood debts that people other than himself will pay.
And Hillary of Honduras is in the wings, cackling over the murder of Berta Cáceres, no doubt. We came, we couped, she died. Wait till she gets control of Obamas drone fleet. She’ll be “really good at killing” too. Think the Norwegian Nobel committee will give her the license to kill, right off the bat, too?
It can always get worse, and it is doing so.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 7 2016 18:35 utc | 95

Grieved, at 33 you say that the GW science feels real to you. Also ” So I’m willing to learn that climate change is a hoax. But dammit, someone is going to have to explain the Arctic’s melting to me.”
OK, I will.
Start w this satellite image: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Note that there’s no icecap in the Arctic; it’s all sea ice, no land under it. The more accurate way to measure it would be by volume because the main part of the ice is imprisoned between continents and the island of Greenland. So the main body of ice cannot extend, but grows thicker instead. Nevertheless, they give us the extent of the ice rather than its volume & that’s OK. If you do the math from the numbers they supply, you’ll see that the extent of the Arctic sea ice is 7% below the average February during the 1981-2010 period. So what? The ANTarctic ice is growing. It’s the GLOBAL temperature that we care about. Some places are warming & some are cooling; the Arctic is no more important than the Antarctic or than any other place. Because Arctic ice is sea ice it doesn’t raise sea level when it melts, since it has already displaced its mass.
However, the govt-funded IPCC & the oligarch-controlled media tell you that the 7% diminution of Arctic ice indicates runaway warming.
So you want to know WHY the Arctic is melting even though you don’t care why the Antarctic is growing, right? Here are the reasons that I know about:
1. Soot is effective in melting Arctic ice because it’s only sea ice, therefore not supercooled. (The sun heats the black coating.)
2. Lots of undersea volcanic activity in the Arctic, including the 1800 km long Gakkel Ridge, a hotbed of volcanic activity and hydrothermal vents, located in the Arctic ocean between Greenland and Siberia.
3.  An unprecedented event that meteorologists called the “Ridiciulously Resilient Ridge” emerged in the Pacific Northeast in the Winter of 2013-14. This high pressure ridge diminished the wind-driven churning which brings cool upwelling from the bottom to the sea’s surface. Sea surface temperature anomalies of at least 2.5 degrees occurred. Eventually the ridge was nicknamed “The Blob”. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/16/nasa-confirms-the-pacific-warm-blob-has-disappeared/ Will take awhile for the heat to dissipate.
4.  When Jetstream is tilted further N or there’s a strong El Nino, warmth is shifted further North. El Nino of 2015/2016 was very strong, like the one of 1997/98. Accordingly, well-informed skeptics like Anthony Watts predicted that this El Nino like the last one would cause a temperature spike which would last the following year as well, as the El Nino and its heat decayed:
“Even skeptics expect global surface temperatures (and global lower troposphere temperatures) will be higher in 2016 than they were in 2015, but skeptics understand the reasons for it…that a strong El Niño raises global surface temperatures in the El Niño evolution year AND (typically) even more in the El Niño decay year. That means, as the 2015/16 El Niño winds down in 2016, global surface and lower troposphere temperatures will continue to rise in response to the El Niño. I reminded readers of this likelihood back in September 2015” — Anthony Watts http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/02/a-foolish-bet-about-2016-global-surface-temperatures-its-nothing-more-than-a-silly-publicity-stunt/
You know that it is expected that Earth will continue to warm at approx .8 degrees C per century just as it has since about 1760 at the nadir of the Little Ice Age, right?
This link is an authoritative temperature record for 120 years by NCDC, NOAA & NESDIS. The blue “smoothed line” takes the yearly variances out. As you can see, the actual data confirms that there has been LESS than the predicted 8/10s of a degree C per century. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201101-201112.png
—
This interview is one of the best summations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI3doCKhI7Q&ebc=ANyPxKoelbUtoaHuQl9ypjMtdfHe45A_h5ZhUx6mv_Ghn9wBCV2u_0FbmgwtOMkJWIMFcgm0ExId-QY0QNKWx7ojKj4cCOX01Q#t=8.121 .
Or you may prefer Anthony Watts interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiuHOzykxC0 . He was a warmist, activist meteorologist & explains what step by step new knowledge led him away from it. Now has the most-visited climate website.

Posted by: Penelope | Mar 7 2016 22:39 utc | 97

@ rufus magister 90
“Some unnamed guy from some unidentified institution shootin’ hoops at the Y must be an expert.”
And who says that he’s an “expert”? Furthermore, an “expert” on what subject? The point was that even in my limited personal circle, I’ve heard evidence of what Happer and Lindzen have observed amongst their professional contacts and colleagues. Implying that the depth of cooptation and finacial corruption is indeed widespread.
Your concern about retired scientists has some merit, if you’re talking about scientists long retired, and pronouncing on current research. However, if you think a scientist who put in 40 years in a field, somehow isn’t worth listening to regarding his/her honest appraisal of his/her field, over the lifetime of their career, that’s an absurdity. They should also be queried on questions of perverse incentives and sociological factors.
“Happer’s physics degree hardly makes him a jack of all trades in science.”
You failed to mention that Happer, himself, did climate modeling, early in his career. Amusingly, his model(s) also ran hot; apparently, he also posited “positive feedback” for the otherwise non-threatening approx. 1 deg/c/CO2 doubling climate sensitivity, that other climate modelers have also assumed.
Furthermore, even if he had zero experience in climate modeling, that would be irrelevant to his reports of other scientists playing the CO2 catastrophism card, in order to secure research $$$.
“I note that your report does not indicate any of the honoraria were used or received improperly, or affected his work. Since he started working on the topic in the ’80’s, he was clearly looking for a long-term payout, right?”
I tend to believe that Hansen is a wacky, but sincere, true believer, while Mann is consciously dishonest. Since I can’t climb inside their heads, I can’t speak authoritatively to what they “really” believe, nor to what motivates them. Nor is it particularly relevant to understanding the GENERAL question of WHAT SIDE OF THE CO2 CATASTROPHISM “ISSUE” THE ECONOMIC INCENTIVES MOSTLY LAY. (Having said that, I vaguely recall that Hansen advised Gore on his error-filled “Inconvenient Truth”, and must have known that ice core data, by the time of that movie being made, had enough resolution to show that temperature LEADS CO2. That suggests dishonesty on Hansen’s part, though if he’s nutty enough, his brain might just not have been able to process contradictions to his pseudo-religious climate beliefs.)
“Your “climate guy” doesn’t actually discuss the peer review process, he merely provides a list of 250 articles from a variety of journals.”
I was pointing the moonofalabama.org community to a website, from which they can conduct further research, not just to the latest posting at physicist Rancourt’s blog. Try harder.
“I don’t get it, it’s the oligarchy funding the “warmists”?”
The oligarchs have biased the system by setting up the incentive structures to suit their purposes. They don’t NEED to micro-manage. Google Maurice Strong for more info.
“Isn’t Exxon-Mobil just about as oligarchic as you can get, to say nothing of the other varied players?”
I don’t doubt that. Rather than write anything fresh, I’ll quote myself from a few years, ago, (ref Exxon-Mobil joins the ‘National Climate Declaration’ / http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/03/exxon-mobil-joins-the-national-climate-declaration/ )

Exxon-Mobil is #2 on the Fortune 500 list (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/snapshots/387.html) with profits of $41 Billion.
Meanwhile, the excellent 50-1 project didn’t get it’s relatively paltry funding goal fulfilled.
What could possibly be wrong with that picture?
I’ve often referred to Exxon-Mobil as the “Climate Change Denier Dog that Didn’t Bark”. With their deep pockets, they could crush CAGW mythology. They could send Nir Shaviv and Christopher Monckton on a well advertised speaking tours, take out ads showing the “pause” in global temperatures, educate the population about the real extent of sea level rise, Donna LaFramboise’s findings, etc., etc.
They appear to be deeply invested in the status quo, and, just like Denis Rancourt claimed, are going to keep pumping their oil and selling it. If anything, they will not “bark”, but rather go along with the CAGW scam, as long as it doesn ‘t hurt their profits
Indeed, keeping oil in the ground longer, while demand steadily rises, is one way to keep those billions in profits rolling in. Central to such a strategy are
a) having governments raise the price of oil via taxation (e.g., carbon taxation), but not so much that worldwide demand contracts
b) keeping large amounts of oil off the market, via warfare and destabilization of oil producing countries (see Greg Palast)
c) KEEPING ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES FROM EVER BECOMING VIABLE COMPETITORS
The son of the late, great inventor Dr. Alvin Marks has personally communicated to me that Exxon Mobil (as well as the US government) worked to suppress his father’s lumeloid technology. I’ve also known, from 30 years ago, that US auto companies suppress gas saving technologies (long story, 2nd hand info). At MIT, they’ve held conferences on supposedly discredited cold fusion, and here in NJ, a small research group has beat the big, hot fusion projects in a couple of parameters, funded by, relatively speaking, peanuts. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/08/1071933/-In-the-race-for-fusion-a-dark-horse-takes-the-lead ) I’ve met Eric Lerner, and hung out with his friend and former roomate. Last I heard, this brilliant guy has to waste his time and energy trying to get funding, despite his track record.
Exxon Mobil is no more your friend than the deluded Greenies spreading the CAGW religion.

Posted by: metamars | Mar 8 2016 3:50 utc | 99