Don't Know Much about Hanukkah

A glimpse into the complex stories behind Hanukkah here. Senator Hatch wrote a Hanukkah song?

Our Christmas Gift from Congress

The Democratic Senators have been tirelessly wheeling and dealing over "health care reform", promising special gifts from the taxpayers to residents of states whose senator(s) are on the fence concerning how to vote. And both our senators and representatives have been asked to vote on several measures which they have not been given the opportunity to read.

Think back on your Christmas shopping this year. How long did it take you to decide on a suitable gift for everyone on your list? Think about gifts you have received from loved ones in past years that just didn't seem quite right. Then consider Virginia Postrel's piece on giving gifts. She takes it from the personal to the political in the last sentence:

The problem of buying good presents for other people, even people you supposedly know well, illustrates that old familiar Hayekian concept, the knowledge problem. If you can't even give your loved ones the right presents, how likely is it that a central authority could make the right decisions for everyone?

There are about 300 million people in the United States. Could YOU set up a centrally-run health care system which would serve all of them well at a reasonable cost? The Senate Leadership is so confident of their superior insight that they are trying to add language to make it very difficult for future Senates to change the rules concerning their Care Rationing Board. Follow the link. Time to read some Hayek. Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics wouldn't be a bad choice, either.

A very interesting observation in a short piece by Scott Stein, a blogger with whom I am not familiar:

I am re-reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and came across a passage that, though about the problems with monarchy, applies perfectly to today’s political class. . . Paine’s words describe the entire political class — career politicians and bureaucrats of both major parties with enough ego to want to govern

Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Think of members of Congress who have not worked in a business in decades, or ever, whose professional lives have for years consisted of self-aggrandizing committee meetings and speechifying — think of them confidently telling people how some new regulation will or will not affect businesses. Think of members of Congress who voted for a thousand-page bill that they have not read (and even if they have) confidently explaining how this will improve the lives of people subject to their whims, subject to the votes they cast in an act of party loyalty or as a political trade in order to receive funding for their home state or support for their own pet projects. . . (emphasis mine)

Read the whole thing.

Our ruling class has been developing for decades. But look at this graph of Presidential Advisors since Teddy Roosevelt. It shows the percentage of advisors with prior private-sector experience. Quite striking. Some presidents don't seem to value a private sector perspective much. No wonder the academic and bureaucratic mindset prevails in government. Theory and ideology are so much more attractive than messy reality.

Iowahawk: The True Christmas Spirit of the Beltway

Time to put Washington aside for a little time, preferring Frank Capra over Iowahawk, and to concentrate on having a Merry Christmas.

Coming Home from Copenhagen

Roger L. Simon summarizes his experience at the Copenhagen Climate Conference: "I have seen the future, and it stinks.

I am only just back last night from the Copenhagen UN climate change conference, yet am convinced of the accuracy of my headline – an obvious parody of Lincoln Steffens’ famous 1921 declaration about the Soviet Union, “I have seen the future and it works. ” In this case, however, the future concerns (supposedly democratic) “global governance” and not the workers’ state. For make no mistake about it, Kenneth Andersen is correct. COP15 was only peripherally about “climate change” and almost entirely about UN hegemony.

His comments on the European press and on ClimateGate are interesting. Also:

Copenhagen was intended as an important advance toward world governance. On the face of it, it’s a beautiful idea. When I was younger, I was highly attracted to it. But my up-close-and-personal encounters with the UN have turned that attraction to near revulsion. It’s very clear that under global government – because of its size and natural inefficiencies – accountability is nigh on to impossible, transparency nothing but a distant dream, very often not even desired. In short, it’s 1984. And COP15 was just that – legions staring at world leaders on Jumbotrons as they blathered platitudes, while negotiations were conducted behind closed doors. (That’s bad enough in our Congress, but on a global scale…?)

Simon did take advantage of his trip to repair a hole in his education:

But I will add that, perhaps fortuitously, my long voyage home . . . finally gave me ample undisturbed time to finish a book I had wanted to read for a long time – F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. How apropos it turned out to be. Hayek had a lot of this figured out in 1944. I recommend to all who haven’t taken the time. It’s just a sign of my own indoctrination that I had read Marx, Marcuse, Gramsci, etc., etc. first.

From the comments:

I would also urge you to read Hayek’s collection of essays titled “The Fatal Conceit”. I fortunately read his polemic 40 years ago and realized that I loved liberty more than equality. Hayek said that those that placed a higher value on liberty did better on any measure of equality, other than that of the grave or the gulag, than those who purported to produce a society of equals.

Weekend Break - images and a little music

Hope you enjoy them.

Classic illustrations of Dickens novels.

Snowflakes up close.

Beautiful Libraries.

Jay Walker's Library.

Sippican Cottage: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Sometimes this guy writes in a way that really gets to me. And then he posts of video of a Japanese country-western group.

Summing Up the Copenhagen Conference

Victor Davis Hanson does it in just a few words. I agree with him. I can't think of any reason to take this conference seriously, other than the power it confers on truly terrible governments. And upon an opaque, unaccountable UN.

Illustration of an obsessive mindset: "So we cheated a bit" - Climate Art meets Climate Science:

Taking his cue from discredited ClimateGate "scientists," Danish artist Jens Galschioet came up with an arresting way to precisely illustrate the soggy dangers of climate change. High above the heads of Copenhagen's pedestrians, Galschioet strategically placed a series of red, flashing lights: With the blinking red lights placed all around Copenhagen, including near the Bella Center that currently hosts the climate change talks, he hopes to stir images in people’s minds of what the Danish capital will look like when the Greenland ice melts. . .{That is, if sea levels don't drop}.

"Technically and pedagogically it is a sound idea. The problem is that they are hanging at incorrect heights by the city lakes, where they currently sit at 11.34 metres," said architect Ole Oerslev.

The city lakes are already 5.89 metres above sea level, so the flashing lights should have been put up at 69 centimetres height.

"The rest of the lights put up around the city and out by the Bella Center are in the correct elevation. We wanted to display something downtown as well and even though we knew that the lights should have been at 69 centimetres, we didn’t really feel it looked like much. So we cheated a bit and decided to explain if anyone found out," explained Galschioet.

"For all of you hateful Metric Deniers out there (I'm looking at you, America), 11.34 meters equals 37.2 feet and 69 centimeters is a little over 2 feet. Since I missed out on all the fun of reconstructing ClimateGate data, here's my groundbreaking contribution:" . . Graph at the link. Plus another piece of really weird Climate Art. Go ahead. Take a chance. Follow the link.

Other Climate Change art, science and rhetoric brings to mind in an ironic way examples of too much government power, in particular for me: Nazi concentration camps and Rwandan torture/death squads. Robert Mugabe:

When the capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it's we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere, who gasp and sink and eventually die.

A representative of Mugabe's government wants to reduce the population of the country by half. They have been busy doing this by killing people from the wrong tribal background, as well as their political opposition. And by terrorizing and kicking out of the country the Indians, Asians and Caucasians who knew how to run things. Now, Mugabe is highly dependent on aid from "the capitalist gods of carbon", whom he needs to maintain the power of his murderous regime.

From the comments:

Funny how environmentalism shades into socialism over time.

Given the exemplary environmental record of socialist countries, this make total sense.

Yes: no rich capitalist country has ever come close to the environmental destruction wreaked by the USSR, particularly in its lesser republics and satellite countries. Once they're in power, socialist governments justify all sorts of damage to "lesser mortals", and to the environment, for the "common good". Or as some might put it, for "Climate Justice".

Think President Obama has the power to convince China not to build a new coal-fired plant every 10 days? Think Again.

Think that carbon in the air will be reduced if aluminum production moves from Australia to China so that Australia can reduce its "carbon footprint"? Think again.

Many on the Left went home from this conference discouraged and disillusioned, especially with President Obama, whom they had hoped could bring the world together on the issue of carbon reduction and "climate justice". Many government representatives went home to try to figure out how to use the next conference, in Mexico City, to further their own interests.

Music of Zimbabwe from a group now apparently living in Austria. Liner notes for #16:

16. Vinqo (Trad., arr., Dumisani Ramadu Moyo) – “Ama Vinqo Vinqo” are skin ripples of fat that are characteristic of bulkiness. Fatness in Ndebele society is a desirable sign of success and good health. This song is dedicated to Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, the late great former vice-president of Zimbabwe who founded the ZAPU liberation movement. He was affectionately called “u ma Fuku fuku” in reference to his large frame. Insingizi lament that since his departure, Zimbabweans have faced unimaginable suffering and despondence. We miss him greatly.

Check out the samples for #5 and #10, too. CD also available at highly capitalist Walmart as "Spirit of Africa: Insingizi." Recommended.

After-Christmas Reading - How the World Works

Thomas Sowell's reading list: Dick Morris is the man who helped rescue Bill Clinton's presidency from a situation similar to Obama's situation now. He may not always be correct in his prognostications, and he may be annoying sometimes, but he knows how Washington works.

The Character of Nations sounds interesting.

The very title of “The Character of Nations” is a challenge to the prevailing ideology that denies or downplays underlying differences among individuals, groups and nations. There are many examples of these differences. For example, Professor Codevilla says: “While it is unimaginable to do business in China without paying bribes, to offer one in Japan is the greatest faux pas.”

He sees the things that are valued differently in different cultures as the key to everything from economic progress to personal freedom.

But these values are not set in stone— which means that countries which currently benefit from a given set of values can lose those benefits when those values get lost.

Codevilla says: “The reason why inhabitants of the First World should keep the Third world in mind is that habits prevalent in the countries that became known as the Third World are a set of human possibilities that any people anywhere can adopt at any time. As Argentina showed in the twentieth Century, falling from the First World to the Third can be easy and quick.”

I'm not in the market for a college right now. But Sowell's own books on the housing boom and bust and Applied Economics are timely. The first is said by reviewers not to spare any involved segment of society from criticism. The second is recommended for people planning new social programs, or voting for people who create new social prgrams. So that those programs don't end up hurting more than helping.

Here's a post by someone I don't know much about for people who think that there's such a thing as laissez-faire capitalism in the United States.

The current state and the current banking sector require one another; neither can exist without the other. They are so reciprocally intertwined that each is an extension of the other.

Remember this point the next time somebody tells you that "free market madmen" caused the current financial crisis that is threatening to undermine the economy. There is no free market. There is no "laissez-faire capitalism." The government has been deeply involved in setting the parameters for market relations for eons; in fact, genuine "laissez-faire capitalism" has never existed.

Guess I'm going to have to break down and read something by Hayek. Update: Former lefty radical Roger L. Simon recommends The Road to Serfdom, which he just finished reading, as a way to improve your understanding of world events today, ("Hayek had a lot of this figured out in 1944.") and a commenter recommends The Fatal Conceit. I've also been thinking that I should read something by Gramsci or Lakoff, to help me understand the post-Stalin thinking and actions of the Left.

From New Ledger, an interview with the author of "The End of Secularism" - by which he means the end of the idea that secularism is a neutral position to which everyone should default when in public. Interesting. And a list of other books, heavy on world history.

For science fiction (or movie) buffs, there's a Michael Crichton retrospective. Videos from his educational activities here and here.

Comic relief for grumpy people: Compilatation of Florence King's columns in her Misanthrope's Corner.

Classic children's literature available here.

Separation of Powers? Bah! Promise and Peril of the Executive State

The Senate failed to ratify the Kyoto agreement during the Clinton Administration. This was later blamed on George W. Bush. As if he had the power to force the Senate to vote to harm the economy.

Now, lots of people also seem to think that Obama has a great deal of power to negotiate in Copenhagen and beyond without congressional approval, and they're apparently right, according to a report discussed at the link. But that power comes with risks to the President.

What we have here is the modern executive state. And the tale of how so powerful an executive arose is not really complicated: Congress and the Supreme Court conspired to create it. A century ago, progressives began viewing the Constitution’s checks and balances not as protections against overweening power but as impediments to enlightened government — the kind of government that would one day be used to “save the planet.” Since the New Deal, Congress has delegated ever more powers to the executive branch without much guidance as to how they are to be used. And a supine Court, cowed originally by Franklin Roosevelt’s threat to add six new members, has gone along, in the name of “democracy” and judicial modesty, even as the expanding government has looked less and less democratic.

Still, some democratic controls are still in place. . .

If Obama goes too far, Congress or the courts could become involved. But the power of foreign governments not to cooperate with Obama is an even greater PR risk to the President than any potential domestic action to limit his power. China is asserting new-found power. Reprise SNL. Sort of crude, but makes a point. Likewise Ace, though one quote concerning Obama's "unprecedented" non-binding agreement is cogent:

There is no binding part of this deal. That's why China, India, etc., have agreed to it. It doesn't require them to do anything.

Instead, it asks countries that are stupid enough to slit their economic throats to do so, so that India and China and so on can reap the rewards

Peril from the American Left: A lot of people thought that if Obama came to Copenhagen, he would surely be able to bring the world together on Global Warming. Some Progressives are disappointed in Obama's lack of messianic power to bring to pass a binding agreement between the leaders of the world's contries - rich and poor, free and unfree:

This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter. The president has wrecked the UN and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight.

Wow. The reality-based community isn't very reality-based sometimes.

History and Future of Progressivism: Four intellectual forerunners of Obama-style progressivisism, plus comedy gold from John Kerry. And from President Obama, if you follow the last link.

Democrats in trouble from their frenzied agenda

George Will on the Democrats' promises to do more that is humanly possible:

. . . Since {Obama} won the presidency promising to stop the rise of the oceans, there has been a substantial decline in American support for the global-warming catechism, which proclaims that warming is (a) a big deal and (b) substantially America's fault. Americans have noticed that, judging by the words and deeds of the president and of the Congress his party controls, global warming is (a) an imminent threat to the planet but (b) not as urgent a concern as health-care reform. . . .

America's nerves are frayed and tempers are short. The country is uneasy, even queasy, because Obama and Congress seem to be dashing through an ambitious agenda in a slapdash manner. Their haste reflects a hubris that prevents them from acknowledging that they do not know how to do all that they are attempting. Consider the exasperation of Lamar Alexander.

A Tennessee Republican of mild mien, Alexander is a former governor and former president of the University of Tennessee. For seven years in the Senate he has been a model of the moderate Republicanism that is, we are mournfully told by the Republican Party's non-Republican moral auditors, as valuable as it is scarce. So it was noteworthy that he recently had this to say about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposed health-care legislation:

"This bill is historic in its arrogance—arrogance that we in Congress are wise enough to take this complex health system, that is 17 percent of our economy and serves 300 million Americans, and think we can write a 2,000-page bill and change it all…c It's arrogant to dump 15 million low-income Americans into a medical ghetto called Medicaid that none of us or any of our families would ever want to join."

The rest of the column includes comments reflecting Will's consistent opposition to military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and observations on the changing stance toward Iran and nukes. Has an interesting ending. Worth considering.

Harry Reid, Herman van Rompuy and REALLY Big Government

Harry Reid has been in the news lately, as he tries to push through his massive version of the health care bill before people find out what it says.

Mark Steyn looks at the bigger picture concerning growing statism, weaving several trains of thought into a coherent piece comparing Barak Obama, Herman van Rompuy and Harry Reid. A short work of art which is interesting just for its structure, whether or not you agree with him. Read the whole thing. Excerpts:

Rich Lowry, my boss at National Review, writes that Obama has become a "crashingly banal" bore. The good news is that he "is not nearly as dull as, say, Herman van Rompuy."

Who?

Oh, come on. Herman van Rompuy. He's some Belgian cove who was recently appointed "president" of "Europe," whatever that means. . .

Steyn then writes about how van Rompuy was chosen to head up the EU, in part, because he was not charismatic. "By contrast, the point of Barack Obama is to dazzle. . . . As Evan Thomas of Newsweek drooled a mere six months ago, Obama was 'standing above the country ... above the world. He's sort of God.'" Plus, Steyn makes an excursion into satire concerning the repetitive rhetorical patterns which have emerged in President Obama's speeches. Not to be missed if you want to understand the way the President's speeches now affect various audiences.* Then:

To return to what's-his-name, the Belgian bloke, van Rumpoy, just because he's a nonentity doesn't mean he's not effective. In his acceptance speech the other week, he declared: "2009 is the first year of global governance."

Did you get that memo?

Me, neither. But he has a point. The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown's plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen climate summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of "global governance." Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like "global governance"? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?

America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress . . . Reid's beavering away, advancing the cause of van Rumpoy-scale statism.

The news this week that the well-connected Democrat pollster, Mark Penn, received $6 million of "stimulus" money to "preserve" three jobs in his public relations firm to work on a promotional campaign for the switch from analog to digital TV is a perfect snapshot of Big Government. . .

Because of the disconnect between rhetoric and reality in many of the President's speeches, many conservatives noted their surprise and relief at the realism and humility in President Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Steyn found one piece of characteristic "dazzle" that the speechwriters left in:

. . . Can you believe this line made it into the speech?

"I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war."

Well, there's a surprise. When you consider all the White House eyeballs that approve a presidential speech, it's truly remarkable that there's no one to scribble on the first draft: "Scrub this, Fred. It makes POTUS sound like a self-aggrandizing buffoon." It's not even merely the content, but the stylistic tics: "I do not bring with me" – as if I, God of Evan Thomas' Newsweek, am briefly descending to this obscure Scandinavian backwater bearing wisdom from beyond the stars.

Obama's sagging numbers are less a regular presidential "approval rating" than a measure of the ever-widening gulf between the messianic ballyhoo and his actual performance. . .

Maybe President Obama can pull out of his recent pattern of over-the-top, repetitive rhetoric. The speech in Oslo was a hopeful sign. Time will tell. Meamwhile we need to watch people like Harry Reid and Herman van Rompuy, working away steadily and usually quietly to increase the power of people like them over our lives.

.

* Historical note: When Mark Steyn was blogging about Barak Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention which put his career on fast-forward, Steyn's reaction was something to the effect that "The Republicans are in trouble." He was looking toward the future career of Obama. Steyn's assessment of Obama's effectiveness in speaking, especially in light of his over-exposure, has changed some in the article linked above. Several factors probably contributed to his markedly different reviews.

If you're interested in the President's speeches, you might also see if you can still detect evidence of The Obama Code, "a moral vision and a view of unity" in President Obama's recent speeches. The "code" was not expounded by Obama - it was "discovered" by Professor George Lakoff, one of the Left's leading teachers of techniques for deceptive and influential rhetoric. The ends justify the means, you know.

The "Seven Crucial Intellectual Moves" of the Obama Code are:

1. Values Over Programs
2. Progressive Values Are American Values
3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship
4. Protection and Empowerment
5. Morality and Economics Fit Together
6. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk
7. Contested Concepts and Patriotic Language

Harry Reid's Self-Sacrificing Push for Health Care Reform

Barak Obama promised us "Hope and Change". There are several governmental efforts right now to dramatically change the world. Some people have pointed out how improbable it is that someone like Harry Reid could be leading one of those efforts. Quite a contrast in personality and style with the dazzling Barak Obama. That contrast, and its potential consequences, is discussed in a fascinating manner by Mark Steyn, here. Many people think that Reid may be sacrificing his chances for re-election by his push to pass this unpopular bill.

Ace:

We must rush, rush, rush to pass a bill, without even reading it, so that the bill can take effect in 2014.

Yeah that makes sense.

Once in a while a wildly inappropriate statement by Harry Reid makes the news. He recently compared Republicans who opposed his health care bill to those in the past who had supported the continuation of slavery in the United States. Maybe that's why Reid didn't even tell Republican senators what was in his bill. Update December 17, Sen. McConnell:

“Americans were told the purpose of reform was to reduce the cost of health care.

"Instead, Democrat leaders produced a $2.5 trillion, 2,074-page monstrosity that vastly expands government, raises taxes, raises premiums, and wrecks Medicare.

“And they want to rush this bill through by Christmas — one of the most significant, far-reaching pieces of legislation in U.S. history. They want to rush it.

“And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen.

“That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private.

“That’s what they intend to bring to the floor and force a vote on before Christmas."

Hope. Change. Transparency.

Whatever its details, Reid's bill would move Americans closer to the captivity to government bureaucracy now seen in Canadian health care, which is hitting the predictable decline which develops in government-run systems.

The Canadian system is now seriously under-serving those with chronic conditions and those outside cities. In the UK, the rich can opt out of the crumbling public system if they are willing to forego all government-paid health care, while continuing to pay taxes for such care. This option is not available to Canadians. Those who now come to the U.S. for care may soon find that option for escape from captivity to bureaucracy gone, too. And the pharmaceutical development upon which they freeload may be very seriously curtailed in the future, too.

With all the recent demonizing of insurance companies by the Democratic leadership and the plan to double-tax the best insurance policies, and to otherwise turn insurance companies into government contractors, how long can it be before only the very rich will be able to afford quality care, or before just about everyone must accept "standard", rationed care?

Joseph C. Phillips reminds Harry Reid of some actual history concerning slavery.

In remarks intended to further paint the political right as immoral, racist and evil, Reid offered that, “Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ’slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’”

Reid is obviously confused. Republicans have no power to block passage of the senate healthcare reform bill. Nor are Republicans delaying passage of Obamacare. If Healthcare reform is being delayed and/or eventually dies it will be because one or more of Reid’s fellow Democrats decided to do the right thing and kill this Frankenbill where it lays.

Ironically, had Reid been speaking to Democrats he would not only have been currently correct, but historically accurate as well. . .

Reid's health care bill is unpopular in his own state. Reid has just deeply, and inaccurately, insulted his constituency as well as his Republican colleagues. Why does he seem so desperate to pass this bill when it is doing him so much political damage?

Byron York talked with a Democratic Strategist who presented some possible explanations: :

In the end, perhaps the most compelling explanation for Democratic behavior is that they are simply in too deep to do anything else. "Once you've gone this far, what is the cost of failure?" asks the strategist.

At that point -- Republicans will love this -- he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

That's it. Democrats are all in. They're going through with it. Even if it kills them.

Bill Whittle on the World-Changing Dynamo of American Enterprise

Movie screenwriter Bill Whittle makes his case for the morality of preferring free enterprise over unrestrained State Power. Worth 25 minutes of your time to help you clarify your thinking, whether you prefer more or less government control over the private sector. Might be worth watching twice. He discusses the differences between necessary and harmful regulations on the private sector in a memorable way. Examples: General Motors and the "California Death Spiral" of unfunded employee benefits.

Note the kudzu analogy. And the reminder about intellectual inertia in the Third World.

Registration is free.

President Obama goes to Oslo

He's still got a way to go in personal diplomacy, but you can't have everything. And the Norwegians did put President Obama in a very difficult position.

Kudos to Mr. Obama on his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. This must have been an extraordinarily difficult speech for him to give, bearing in mind what the Norwegians and much of his base would rather have heard. He sounded more "human" than I've heard him sound in quite a while. He got good reviews:

President Obama displayed exceptional dignity and humility in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in Oslo.

and some support from some surprising places.

Strong-arm tactics in Copenhagen and Washington

Powerline:

Global warming alarmist Stephen Schneider gave a press briefing in Copenhagen today. No one was impolite enough to remind Schneider of the days when he claimed the world was about to be destroyed by global cooling, but Phelim McAleer. . . showed up to ask a question about Climategate.

Schneider's response, suggesting that the emails that were leaked by a whistleblower might have been "edited," was wholly disingenuous. A considerable number of the emails were Schneider's, so if they were somehow inauthentic, he certainly could have said so. . . . Which means that Schneider had nothing whatsoever to say in response to McAleer's question.

Except to call security and make McAleer's cameraman stop filming, even though the event was ostensibly a press briefing open to the media. . . .

Global warming hysteria isn't science, it's politics. And totalitarian politics at that.

"If only the UN were this tough on terrorists." Somebody feels their will to power being thwarted.

More strong-arm tactics - proposed EPA regulations designed to intimidate business into supporting cap and trade:

The easiest way to get rich is to legislate yourself some money. P.J. O'Rourke.

(Registration for videos free.) Past energy boondoggles outlined. Even a straight energy tax would be better than cap-and-trade, but provides much less opportunity for graft.

Shadow Conference in Copenhagen: The conference concerning the science.

Grim and Determined Environmentalists

Further to the "narrow intellectual gatekeeping" by a small group of scientists which was revealed by the ClimateGate documents, Wretchard notes that observations about the scientists involved in the ClimateGate correspondence remind him of a type of activist he encountered when he was part of an underground resistance movement against the corrupt Marcos regime in the Philippines. Quoting Steven Hayward concerning the ClimateGate documents:

. . . . How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them? There isn’t the tiniest hint anywhere that any of these guys ever grin. It jives with my experience of environmentalists for 20 years now that they are the single most humorless slice of humanity on the planet. . . .

The descriptions jump out at you. When you read communications which routinely refer to others as ‘not reliable’; when a 1,000 emails contains not a single shred of wit or humor, then there’s some probability you’re encountering what we used to call the Grim and Determined man or G & D for short. It was an acronym my group of friends had for fanatical and dogmatic members of the Communist Party during the underground days. This behavior was so obvious it actually made it dangerous to be around them. These people could not assume a cover identity. They had only one invariate personality and any disguise they attempted called attention to themselves because it was at such odds with their unrelenting, monotonic and obsessive personalities.

Whenever you saw a G & D man, the odds were that he was being sent over to try and discipline you. It didn’t matter whether or not you recognized his authority, the G & D man always presumed that he had some kind of Petrine authority to bind and loose. They would have been equally at home working for Torquemada or Beria.

Wretchard believes that this personality type is found in movements across the political spectrum. But at this time in history, they seem to have quite a bit of power in the environmental movement. Poem and conclusion at the link. Wretcbard has had a lot of thought-provoking posts lately. On Afghanistan and US politics, reluctance of countries to meet their climate change promises (and the mountain of payments which could be claimed by Russia), the Algerian civil war and terrorist propaganda, how the Mongol empire resembles the internet, and confirmation bias (along with bureaucratic bias) vs. fraud in climate science (interesting comment thread). Scroll through all his recent posts here.

But back to "Grim and Determined" environmentalists: Al Gore is having a difficult time dismissing ClimateGate. He's still calling people who disagree with him "deniers" -- an evil slur which downplays the horrors of the Holocaust and which makes today's real Holocaust Deniers seem rather innocuous. And he's still falsifying the record, even in his latest interview on CNN. And touting the "green" accomplishments of China, without mentioning that the Chinese are also building a new coal-fired power plant every 10 days. A few counter-insults concerning this interview at Deceiver.com:

Putting aside the fact that these “private” e-mails are work product from a publicly funded institution, and are evidence that the science is far from settled, they’re not all 10 years old. They do span the last 13 years, but the most recent e-mail is from just last month. They’re evidence of an ongoing effort to hide and manipulate the data, and to suppress dissent. It’s been going on for a long time, and they’re still trying to get away with it. Al’s doing it right here.

Teaching Math and Science the New-Fashioned Way

Barbara Oakley, Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers and an engineering professor at Oakland University, writes about the influence of government grants on the ways teaching is done in America:

Each year, I get invited to Washington DC to serve as a pimp. A scientific pimp. I’m expected to join a small legion of volunteers to beg my senators and representatives to spend tax money on a program called the Math and Science Partnerships. This program is supposed to help improve how math and science is taught in this country. What could be wrong with that?

Climategate gives us a whole new way of understanding what’s wrong with that.

The breathtaking dishonesty and incompetence of climatology’s intellectual leadership clearly reveals that a discipline can become dominated by a small group of ideologically-motivated intellectual gatekeepers. . . .

Read the whole thing. Follow some of the links. Some interesting points:

Narrow intellectual gatekeeping is omnipresent in academia. Want to know why the government wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on math and science programs that never seem to improve the test scores of American students?[3] Part of the reason for this is that today’s K-12 educators—unlike educators in other high-scoring countries of the world—refuse to acknowledge evidence that memorization plays an important role in mastering mathematics. Any proposed program that supports memorization is deemed to be against “creativity” by today’s intellectual gatekeepers in K-12 education, including those behind the Math and Science Partnerships. As one NSF program director told me: “We hear about success stories with practice and repetition-based programs like Kumon Mathematics. But I’ll be frank with you—you’ll never get anything like that funded. We don’t believe in it.” Instead the intellectual leadership in education encourages enormously expensive pimping programs that put America even further behind the international learning curve. . .

There's more concerning business ethics, prison guards and the rarity of paradigm shifts in science.

I find it interesting that when paradigm shifts do come, they are often brought about by people who have not specialized in the field where the shift occurs.

Limos and Private Planes: Must be a Climate Conference

Like Glenn Reynolds says, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. (And when Big Media starts reporting as if the crisis is based on science rather than politics).

Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking.

Plus, It’s too cold to walk from the hotel to the convention on global warming. Let’s take a limo!

To be fair, lots of attendees went to Copenhagen via the "Climate Express" party train across Europe (no word yet on how they'll get home).

But Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN Star Chamber for global warming), who has called for “hefty aviation taxes … to deter people from flying,” himself flew at least 443,000 miles on alleged IPCC business during a recent 19-month period.

State of the Science: Quick summary of ClimateGate issues.

Most Influential Tree in the world. Dilbert, Climate Scientist. Breach in the bunker.

Thinking about the poor.

ClimateGate and the social validation of knowledge. The decline they hid. And now, physicists speak out against corrupt data in paleoclimatology. Political fallout - conflicts of interest among physicists supporting the UN position? Like working for Big Oil?

Physical evidence vs. computer models. The enemies of science on the Left. Not just ClimateGate.

Global warming and the media:

Google won't autosuggest on ClimateGate. Remember, their motto is "Don't be Evil". Makes you feel good about the web histories they're keeping from your personal computer searches. Meanwhile, 54 newspapers publish the same editorial.

If the most challenging public relations problem for "your side" is that you have conspired -- either to suppress science or to suppress the news of suppressing science -- you might want to reconsider responding with, well, a conspiracy.

Contessa Brewer, ClimateGate Denier: Note that Erica Lovely says, that after so many decades of trying to get some traction on the global warming science the scientists "really can't afford to have much detracting science get out". (So, suppressing inconvenient data is O.K., I guess). Examples of "everyday-speak" among scientists: 1. "Mike's Nature Trick", 2. "Hide the Decline", 3. “Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions of growing season temperatures. Uses ‘corrected’ MXD—but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.” 4. “ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?" 5. “I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their product.” 6. "I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not ‘muddy the waters’ by including contradictory evidence worried me." 7. "All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the datasets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data...." It's all part of how the science became settled.

Global warming and international politics:

Canada: international villain. India and Saudi Arabia want payoffs for retrictive green measures (for different reasons). Russia will get billions in credits from the Kyoto accord (because their economy tanked -- not because they made progress concerning CO2-reducing technology or policies).

The UK government tries to stop re-examination of ClimateGate data.

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Devil' Dictionary: skeptic's guide to Copenhagen.

Global Warming as a Religion (complete with free prostitutes, sort of like in ancient Babylon - though maybe not with official sanction this time.):

We're doing affirmations now? "Skeptics"... affirmations... is this religion?

Yes...just substitute caviar wedges for communion wafers and you've got it.

Latest Advice to the Faithful: Don't go green. "Individual voluntary action is a big distraction from what we really need — compulsion."

Well, I guess that lets all the faithful who flew to Copenhagen in private jets off the hook.

Update: Reporting on the conference in "Hopenhagen" first-hand (Registration for PJTV is free): Heavy on the anti-Western, anti-American and anti-capitalist themes, along with gender issues, etc. Climate scientists were also allowed a small venue, "bringing some complexity" to the simplistic scientific picture painted for the public. But politics prevailed, because of the huge differences "between capitalist patriarchy carbon and women's socialist carbon." Obviously. More here on excess and waste, controlling the message, promoting socialism, irrationality, etc.

Fascinating. Including: "Cuba, another, better world" That is, if you like countries with health care for all and food rationing for most, high literacy rates and librarians in prison, little economic activity and billionaire dictators. Worth registering with PJTV if you haven't registered already.

The CRUtape letters: Good summary of ClimateGate issues

The first reaction at the Powerline blog to the leaked CRU data was:

The emails I've reviewed so far do not suggest that these scientists are perpetrating a knowing and deliberate hoax. On the contrary, they are true believers. I don't doubt that they are sincerely convinced--in fact, fanatically so--that human activity is warming the earth. But the emails are disturbing nonetheless. What they reveal, more than anything, is a bunker mentality. These pro-global warming scientists see themselves as under siege, and they view AGW skeptics as bitter enemies.

There is a lot more insight now into the leaked documents and the reactions of scientists to the information in them. This article by Steven F. Hayward on what we know so far is a good summary. Read the whole thing - click the "printer-friendly" button for an easier-to-read copy, on screen or on paper:

As tempting as it is to indulge in Schadenfreude over the richly deserved travails of a gang that has heaped endless calumny on dissenting scientists (NASA's James Hansen, for instance, compared MIT's Richard Lindzen to a tobacco-industry scientist, and Al Gore and countless -others liken skeptics to "Holocaust deniers"), the meaning of the CRU documents should not be misconstrued. The emails do not in and of themselves reveal that catastrophic climate change scenarios are a hoax or without any foundation. What they reveal is something problematic for the scientific community as a whole, namely, the tendency of scientists to cross the line from being disinterested investigators after the truth to advocates for a preconceived conclusion about the issues at hand. . .

The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA's James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. There is no doubt plenty more of this kind of corruption in other hotbeds of climate science, but there are also a lot of unbiased scientists trying to do important and valuable work. Climate alarmists and their media cheerleaders are fond of warning about "tipping points" to disaster, but ironically this episode may represent a tipping point against the alarmists. The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause. . . .

Fourteen days now that the major networks have not reported on ClimateGate.

Al Gore cancels Copenhagen appearance: Too late to save polar bears?

Re-cap of the ClimateGate controversy, with some historical background here. Tim Blair reports on tragic activists disappointed by Al Gore's cancellation of a personal appearance in Copenhagen. Quoting Mark Steyn:

It may well be that Warmergate has come along too late. I won’t pretend to know the motivations of Jones, Mann and their colleagues, but judging from recent eco-advertising their work appears to have driven worshippers at the First Church of the Settled Scientist literally insane. A new commercial shows polar bears dropping from the skies onto city streets and crushing the cars below …

As the ad explains, “An average European flight produces over 400 kg of greenhouse gases for every passenger. That’s the weight of an adult polar bear.”?Oooookay. It’s A Warmerful Life: every time they call your flight, a poley bear loses its wings.

Blair observes:

Meanwhile, tragic activists who’ve flown to Denmark in the hope of shaking Al Gore’s hand may have killed their share of bears for nothing:
Al Gore has canceled his $1,209-a-handshake appearance in Copenhagen.

Al Gore staunchly refused to debate anyone concerning global warming even before ClimateGate broke. Guess there's no chance of a debate now.

Steyn has a list (somewhat different from mine) concerning how the science became settled. Read the whole thing.

The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of—to pluck at random—enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching “youths,” are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens—if only they can tax and regulate us enough. As they will if they reach “consensus” at Copenhagen. And most probably even if they don’t.

How did we reach this point? Ah, well. Like the proverbial sausage factory, you never want to look too closely at how the science gets settled.

He then gets kind of technical. And he considers the quality of the data with which the CRU was working to be an even greater scandal than their attempts to "hide the decline" - don't stop at the "how the science was settled" list.

The Deceiver website (Motto: Do as you say or we'll say what you do) broke the news about Gore's cancelled appearance, and also has some Global Warming news about Sting.

Tigerhawk on the "moral imperative" to stop global warming via control of the world's economy:

How about we do a bunch of easy stuff first with deregulation and money that is already committed, like making it a lot easier to build nuclear power plants and spending that "stimulus" money on a massive upgrade of electrical grid instead of repaving 12 miles of highway in each Congressional district? Maybe some experimental seeding of the Arctic atmosphere with reflective particulates. All cheap, reversible stuff that will give governments some chance to show competence.

No, really.

When you start with a massive transfer of wealth and an almost gleeful deconstruction of consumer capitalism, you are bound to trigger equally massive resistance, almost no matter how swell your science and how scary your predictions of catastrophe. That is so obvious, one is forced to wonder whether the real point is the massive transfer of wealth and the deconstruction of consumer capitalism.

Better Approaches to Health Care Reform

The public is starting to become aware that current bills for health care reform do not meet any of the objectives which they were supposed to meet. There's opposition from the left -- from the independent feminist Camille Paglia, from the Dean of the Harvard Medical School and even from Howard Dean. The White House seems to be proposing a form of shadow government to contain some of the damage caused by careless legislation, in order to spare legislators and the administration from making tough choices which could be unpopular with voters.

Some conservatives and libertarians think they have some better ideas. From Reason TV, LASIK-inspired health care reform. Charles Krauthammer suggests that Congress kill the bills and start over. Read the whole thing.

I agree with Paglia, Dean and Krauthammer about the disastrous nature of the current bills. Howard Dean believes that making things worse by passing the current legislation under consideration may be worth it if Congress also passes a public option which will lead to single-payer health care. I don't agree with that.

Single-payer health care systems often offer advantages for a while - sometimes for many years. But eventually these systems develop huge problems which are extremely hard to fix. Contrast the Reason video linked above with the following example concerning what happens eventually with single-payer health care:

As is typical in government medicine, there has been no accountability even though Basildon has been criticized publicly since 2001, when the Royal College of Nursing described conditions there as "third world."

And don't even get me started on health care systems for institutionalized people in our own state. . . . .

How the Science became "Settled"

Didn't those CRU scientists ever have a chemistry or physics teacher?

A lot of people seem to be in shock that they threw away their raw data and won't reveal their computer models. The Big 3 networks maintained a news blackout concerning ClimateGate for 12 days (and the BBC had kept the information under wraps for 6 weeks before that). But now Jon Stewart has done a segment on the scandal. Won't be long now until the Big 3 (and other reluctant journalists) have to say something. Maybe they'll focus on the leak, like Senator Barbara Boxer or the New York Times:

We won’t publish on illegally acquired documents. You know, unless doing so would hurt national security, or something.

Meanwhile, the "swarm-intelligence of the blogosphere" is producing lots of information on the technical aspects of the scandal. A ClimateGate document database is up at PajamasMedia if you want to take your own look into how the data fell short of normal scientific standards. More resources here, and here. Or follow some of the links below for a quick education about why the current scandal is important.

Why are scientific standards so low for "climate science"? The medical device company Tigerhawk works for has to validate the software for its studies. Officers of the company (like him), and others, would be subject to prison time if they threw away the raw data for a study which they used to support the use of a new product. He reacts to the revelation that scientists at CRU threw away much of their raw data:

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

So, basically we are being asked to restructure the entire economy of the planet on the say-so of a few "scientists" whose work cannot be verified or even reconstructed. Is there any intellectually honest person who thinks that is a good idea?

THERE APPARENTLY ARE people who still think it's a good idea. Prodigious amounts of carbon will be spewed into the environment for the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen.

Asked to comment on the Climategate scandal, some environmentalists still insist that nothing much has changed because the studies were peer reviewed and because "The Science is Settled".

Fabulous how the "Pentagon of Climate Change" at CRU was able to get the science "settled" in spite of so many obstacles. Like a prominent, tenured professor of meteorology at MIT who is a "denier":

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. . . .

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 . . . represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

A re-cap of some of the techniques used by the alarmists to "settle" the science:

1. Coercion and manipulation involving peer review: Some scientific journals published papers with which they disagreed, so they got those journals blacklisted and/or editors fired.

2. Ad hominem attacks: Some of the alarmists equated anyone who didn't follow the narrative with holocaust deniers. But as Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Clive Jones remind us, the Holocaust actually happened. Blair has a little fun imagining a counter-slur for the "warmies" at the last link.

3. Denying access to data: Since they couldn't even replicate their own data, top global warming alarmists refused to provide any information to people who wanted to check their work in a normal, scientific manner. They even threw away much of their raw data. They discussed deleting even more information after receiving FOI requests, and probably actually did delete more data.

4. Reinforcing "the narrative" outside the scientific community: The media and celebrities advanced the narrative.

5. Protecting moneyed interests: Politicians, along with Big Business and Big Academia had a lot riding on their conclusions. Careers of scientists have been ended and lives ruined for challenging the data of people with more prestige, when the stakes were not nearly as high.

This helps explain why many of the "denier" scientists who have publicly challenged the alarmist data are already retired or are professionals in other fields. And why a scientist who agrees with the theory of man-made global warming, but who suggests cheaper and more people-friendly solutions which do not involve control over the world's economy, lost his job after an inquisition-style hearing.

Why did they think they were justified in these (un)ethical practices? There have long been reasons to suspect that rigorous scientific methods were not being used by many of the scientists who "settled the science". It's time we better understood the philosophy behind Post-normal Science and its use in the Proof of Global Warming. From 2007:

Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues in the Guardian that while scientific evidence may cast doubt on Global Warming why believe science? When a larger truth must be expressed, then "post-normal" science must be employed. . . .

Hulme argues that Global Warming is so important that everyone must act to stop it, whether or not it is scientifically known to exist.

Seems to me that this philosophy gave people permission for the distortions of traditional science which allowed the science to become settled in the most politically advantageous way. The discussions in the comment threads for these two-year-old posts are extremely interesting in light of the recent scandal. If politically-correct thinking like "post-normal science" is invading even the hard sciences in universities, we have some serious reforms to consider. Incidentally, costs for higher education are rising faster than health care costs in America.

Historic perspective: We've been facing doom from melting arctic ice off and on for 128 years.