It seems we have settled into a routine for the 2012 election cycle. Romney keeps limping along, Newt drops little logic bombs here and ther, Cain provides vague (but not wrong) answers that do provide reasonable broad goals, and Perry is Perry (which means nothing is changing). I still think the race is down to Gingrich, Cain and Romney. Iowa will be the opening salvo, and I doubt a clear leader will arise (despite efforts by the media and political industrial complex to anoint one) before spring – if then.

Bachman still underwhelms. Huntsman is just stunningly bizarre. Santorum reminds us why social conservatives manipulating the levers of power in DC is the best solution to our national problems either.

The big loser – Ron Paul. Talk about your implosions.

In the world according to Paul, the Taliban are peace loving people who simply want America out of their country. Except for the fact we were not IN their country on 9-11 (Afghanistan) and they were harboring al Qaeda – a group that had been on a decades long killing spree that culminated with 3,000 dead on 9-11. Paul’s Kumbaya views on the world are naive and dangerous. He sounded more like a far left loon than a real contender for the GOP nomination. If Obama said this – no one would even blink an eye in surprise.

And Newt slammed Paul on is Timothy McVeigh analogy, reminding Paul that it is better to have laws that prevent mass murder than allow mass murder. McVeigh does not represent America, the Taliban and al Qaeda do represent Islamo Fascism at its core. Pretending this is not true can kill many people.

Talk about your debate debacles. Huntsman and Paul are truly examples of the “it’ll never work” wing of government. Professional naysayers who can only think of reasons not to be bold, instead of thinking of how to make bold succeed.

My Marine Corporal son is in town for the Holidays and he caught the replay of the debate on CNN. As far as he (and I would wager most of the military) is concerned Paul is pretty much ignorant, followed not far behind by Huntsman.

Newt may have lit a time bomb with is immigration stance – but he is correct. We will not, as a people, tear families apart and throw people out of this country who have been good neighbors of long standing in our communities. We can create penalties for breaking the law which are financial (because, after all, illegal immigration is a paperwork crime, like not having insurance or tags on your car).

Anyone so blinded to this reality about the long term immigrants is pretty much not worth listening to. This is another one of those slippery slopes (like not passing a budget for years on end). It can come back to bite all of us, if we allow for the deportation of people we don’t like.

I can see a future OWS movement calling for the deportation of all rich people, so they can be closer to their tax exempt money. I can see the call to push people out of their neighborhoods by popular dislike. When people look for vengeance instead of justice, we have lost this nation. We have to accept these long standing neighbors, deal with the true criminal element and stop the influx of people on our borders. Cain was right, the border situation is a national security nightmare right now.

This big question of 2012: will we be the generation that inherited a great nation and left a wreck behind?

I don’t think so. In my view, the popular uprising against government and politics is due to the fact people are getting fed up with extremist zealots of all stripes. And the answer is obvious.

If you right size government, it won’t have the power to bully anyone around.

Update: Ed Morrissey weighs in on the immigration issue:

Besides, while Gingrich’s position may have been an outlier on that stage, it may not be an outlier within the party.  Poll analyst Nate Silver looks at a May 2010 poll from the New York Times among Republican voters on immigration policy and sees Gingrich’s position as mainstream in the GOP:

Among Republican respondents to the survey, 42 percent said the immigrants should be required to leave. But 31 percent said they should be able to stay and apply for citizenship. An additional 23 percent picked the middle option: the immigrants should be allowed to stay, but as guest workers rather than citizens.

That’s 54-42 to work out some compromise regarding long term immigrants. Add in the centrists and Tea Partiers and you have a larger majority of the anti-Obama, anti-Democrat voting block sitting with Newt

[Make sure to checkout the link behind the image above for the back story here]

Phil Jones of CRU is one cocky SOB. He freely admits to avoiding FOIA request by deleting emails in at least one email just released in Climategate II. In email <0021>, which is a response from one Manola Brunet to something Jones sent previously, we have this Jones statement at the end:

Hola Manola,
I’ve saved emails at CRU and then deleted them from the server. Now I’m at home I just have some hard copies.

Dated Sept 12, 2009 this emails is unambiguous evidence (and admission) that Jones deleted emails in response to FOIA actions. A crime, clear and simple.

Then there is this bold admission in <0344>

The inadvertent email I sent last month has led to a Data Protection Act request sent by  a certain Canadian, saying  that the email maligned his scientific credibility with his peers! If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn’t yet) I am supposed to go through my emails  and he can get anything I’ve written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all.

Update: Willis Eschenbach at WUWT has more background and a good statement of what this means – in the case of one Phil Jones:

[Phil Jones:] I do not want to make the raw data available, as it will involve more and more requests. We make the gridded data available and that should be enough.

In is own words, Jones schemes to flaunt the code of ethics and the law. Jones’ as ego issues, as Mr. Eschenbach notes:

My conclusion after all this time is that Phil truly didn’t get it. He actually didn’t understand. He was not the owner of private data. He was the curator of public data. He didn’t understand that FOI requests are legal documents. Throughout the whole episode he treated them as some kind of optional request to grant or not as he saw fit.

There is a part of me that believes this resistance was part ego, part realization down deep their methods and processes  were unprofessionally poor (face it, their code and results are crap as noted in the post and in numerous posts from two years ago and the original release).

Hard to believe this much angst was generated from this much shoddy work.

 As noted earlier we have another round of Cimategate emails (though not so useful documents) out this fall – just in time to consume my Thanksgiving weekend. I just ran across one that has a very interesting (if unclear) statement by one Phil Jones. It is in email file <0031> dated March 2003, and is a chain of responses to a paper [by Baliunas and Soon] that shook up the alarmist camp. Near the beginning of the chain (end of the file) Phil Jones writes this:

The phrasing of the questions at the start of the paper determine the answer they get. They have no idea what multiproxy averaging does. By their logic, I could argue 1998 wasn’t the warmest year globally, because it wasn’t the warmest everywhere.

With their LIA being 1300-1900 and their MWP 800-1300, there appears (at my quick first reading) no discussion of  synchroneity of the cool/warm periods. Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes.

Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do something – even if this is just  to state once and for all what we mean by the LIA and MWP. I think the skeptics will use  this paper to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of years if it goes  unchallenged.

This is a pretty damning admission – though I have to admit it is hard to parse Jones’ writing at times. If you look at any variant of the infamous Hockey Stick graph you see two sets of data. One is the instrument record (which is NOT raw data but raw data that has been processed and cleaned by alarmists) and then the paleo-record from proxies such as tree rings (see below from Wikipedia).

The black line is the so called modern warming, the thing everyone claims is runaway warming from human generated CO2. But what Jones is admitting is that at the grid (i.e. local level) there is no warming at 80% of the grids. This black line summary hides a lot of important details. You only see warming only at the regional, hemispheric and global levels – where the data has been rinsed and massaged with so many unproven assumptions its error bars are massive (see here for my latest post on error and precision). Locally (e.g., America) there has been no warming, and none is expected to show up for decades (according to CRU, GISS, etc).

This is quite damning if true. We know that many areas of the Earth are NOT showing warming, and in fact are showing cooling. Even CRU agrees (email <0003> from Briffa to Bradly on Nov 13, 2000):

The bottom line is that if you show the annual map in the Synthesis paper, there are quite a few areas that have not warmed. Incidentally, the significant trends are indicated as areas enclosed in black lines, and southern Greenland and the oceans to the east of it have clearly cooled (though most boxes are NOT significant. Other cooling areas are extreme south east USA; west central South America; east central Africa and south east China. Probably 95 per cent of the area with data has warmed though.  If you just plug in all areas with at least 25 years coverage , very large areas of the map cool.

Good lord, even the data was not ‘settled’ – just spun by snake oil salesmen like Mann, et al. Clearly Congress should investigate, and the EPA should be suspended from any action (new or old) until this gets sorted out.

Looks like another massive number of emails have been dumped on the internet with some truly amazing snapshots of alarmists plotting their science spin to garner access to trillions of dollars. Amazing to see the greed and egos spewing from some of the comments.

Reader Archtop provided me this link to Air Vent with a number of snippets culled from the emails. Here is the download site (in Russia of course). Plug the number prior to the security code box in to download.

My favorites:

<2884> Wigley:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive […] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC […]

<2009> Briffa:

I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of
all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!

4716> Adams:

Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is extremely
complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and
that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.

<1485> Mann:

the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what
the site [Real Climate] is about.

<5111> Pollack:

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.

<5039> Rahmstorf:

You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out
in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10
solar forcing

<2440> Jones:

I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself
and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<2094> Briffa:

UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails]
anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC
task.

I wonder who will be called to white wash investigate this release? Looks like the alarmists are going to have a real bad time of it this winter.

Update: Much more happening at WUWT. I loved this email exchange [Sept 2003] from Ed Cook of Columbia in response to Keith Briffa of CRU (where Keith suggests leaving Mann and Jones out of the new work):

>to say  would prefer no involvement of Mann and Phil –
>and can you tell me what reconstruction Bradley did ever ? unless
>you mean the Bradley and Jones early decadal series?

I agree that Phil and Mike are best left out of this. Bradley? Yeah,  he has done fuck-all except for the Bradley/Jones decadal series, which he maintains has withstood the test of time. Typical posturing on his part.

Cheers,

Ed

Apparently there is no love between Briffa and Jones/Mann (something I actually detected a while back).

Update: More on Climategate 2011 here. And here at Hot Air

The incompetents in Congress have just handed the Herman Cain campaign a major life line. By demonstrating one more time why big-government is today dysfunctional on a historic scale, the Super Committee (of Super duds) has reminded the voters why we don’t need yet another career politician in the White House. Here is what I wrote back on August 31, 2011 when the super-committee super-fiasco was conceived by Congress-Critters unable to do their job:

This special committee is the stupidest part of all the lame compromises coming out of DC. It does two things. It leaves the decisions to old-time, long-in-the-tooth insiders who long ago lost their connection to Main Street America. It also mutes and sidelines all those small-government House freshman who were voted in last year. They will have little to no voice, even though they are the new messengers from a frustrated and fed up electorate.

As I said, if not now with default hanging over their heads then when? This delaying game is just business-as-usual. Make the cuts NOW. Don’t wait, don’t play games, don’t waste millions on BS media propaganda.

…

This is just another waste of time, another round of promised future better behavior, while nothing fundamentally changes.

So the super, duper, top-dog, incompetents in DC spent 3 months to create this epic fail. Why am I not surprised. Granted, it is all future cuts and no tax hikes now kicking in automatically – but it is both mindless and future promises. Is that the best we in America deserve, a frigging holding pattern as our treasury bleeds out?

The President is AWOL, more interested in cramming liberal policy nonsense down our throats than leading. We have a sea of ex and future Congress Critters running on the GOP side, now with the former House Speaker (former head of the mess) topping recent polls. Is it Obama light in Romney, or consummate DC insiders?

Does anyone want another round of musical chairs in DC, with pols fiddling while our economy tanks? Can we really afford 4 more years of the same old, same old from DC? Look at the EU for what the future brings if we just keeping sending career politicians to DC to protect the army of useless bureaucrats:

Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed this week after banning drink manufacturers from stating that water can prevent dehydration.

Following a three-year investigation, EU officials concluded there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

3 years to decide water doesn’t provide our bodies water???? No amount of fine print policy nonsense can make this act sane. None. 3 years and probably millions of dollars later the only result we see is the same old one – bureaucrats can be pretty damn stupid.

My take is the voters will see this failure as one more reason to throw them bums out and stop electing insiders who abuse the system and our trust and instead look towards the unpolished Main Street candidates to go in and tear the whole thing down and start over.

In June of 2010 I posted on a simple experiment I did that indicated to me there was clearly no way any sub-degree global warming could be detected from surface temp records – even from modern surface temperature records. The back of the envelope calculation I did was quite simple. I sampled one day of temperature highs (Nov 2, 2002) from the area where I live outside DC that spans a 160 km region. The region around DC is very homogenous in terms of geography and urbanization, so temperatures tend to be very similar. It is a very benign region where the spatial correlation of temps is pretty strong. When I did the analysis I discovered for that one day:

1. The minimum value was 38° F with the highest being 55° F
2. The measured range was 17° F for this typical day in November
3. The average (mathematical mean) was 50.8° F, with a standard deviation [1] of 3.05° F
4. The average deviation was 2.00° F

Here is the graph of daily high temperature (dark blue line) along with a 1 standard deviation error bar (light blue bars).

[Click any graph to enlarge]

What this told me straight off is that any single measurement point on the surface of the Earth can only be extrapolated 160 km IF you accept the fact that the temperature for the overall region will be +/- 3° F  (or roughly +/- 2° C). And this is using modern measurement capabilities in a very homogenous region. The further back in time you go the larger these error bars become. Even the infamous global warming alarmists at CRU understood temperature readings were only good to many degrees (2-4°C) in 1961:

This graph comes from a CRU document. Their own analysis indicates that the temperatures for each grid (500 km square) that make up the record for 1961 is only accurate to 1-3° C in most cases. If 1961 is only accurate to this level, all the other years are no better.

NASA GISS attempts to extrapolate a single surface site reading not just 160 km, but anywhere from 400-1000 km (thus making the wild assumption the temperature in Los Angeles reflects the Temperature in Oregon). GISS temps are well beyond a +/- 4° accuracy in any region this large – thus their claims to have detected a 0.8° C trend over the last century is bogus on its face. Why so many PhDs fail to understand this basic tenant of math is beyond me. Why Journalist with elementary school level math can’t grasp this is no big surprise. I wouldn’t want them attempting brain surgery either (but being an expert in statistics and climate science is so simple!). So they get a pass, if not a laugh at their instant IQ points when it comes to preaching to ‘the skeptics’.

Here is a GISS map, and then a real NASA temperature image from one of our state-of-the-art weather satellites. Notice the drastic difference in precision and accuracy?

GISS has the precision of a sun dial on a cloudy day, while the satellite shows the true geographical area of any cool or warm region.

As folks who follow this issue know, a new (and controversial) effort was made to run the same error prone temp data through another round of statistical analysis to see if the result would change. Funny enough, 2+2 still equals 4. This exercise is redundant silliness goes by the acronym BEST.

The head of BEST has made news by producing press releases on results not even through peer review yet and by claiming the Earth has been Warming (which is might have been doing since we left the Little Ice Age less than 200 years ago). He also made news by hiding the fact the last 10-15 years has shown no warming and probable cooling. Like a moth to the flame, the BEST team has been running around trying to find the latest hot camera to wallow in their 15 minutes of whatever.

Recently, they were paraded up to Capital Hill to testify for the Democrats on Man-Made Global Warming. And during that testimony – under oath – a very important admission was made:

Professor Muller presented himself as a former skeptic, but he couched his skepticism as questioning the quality of the land-base surface measurements – according to him 70% of measuring stations in the US are poorly sited with a possible error of 2 to 5 degrees C.

Here we see again the same maximum precision obtainable from the temperature record, which precludes any claims of sub degree signals being mathematically possible. So it is not just AJStrata saying the global temperature record is unable to make claim of any warming below a degree, it is CRU and BEST as well.

What the alarmists have done is used averaging to dilute the record and pretend the resulting foggy haze is precision when it is not. Averaging can sometimes elicit trends, but the trend must be beyond the noise of the measurements – which the current alarmist claims are not. Just look at how they ignore the true variability of temperature (from days to years) by collapsing or wiping out information down to a useless single number:

Again, this is a CRU data set and graph (which was made public during Climategate). I added the labels. For someone like me, trained in math, statistics and graphs this tells me a lot about what is so wrong with the ‘science’ of global warming.

What you are seeing is the complete CRU historic record for Argentina, from 1900 to 2008 covering the months of March April May (MAM). The black line is the 2005 run of the CRU data set, the magenta is the 2008 run. The first problem I see is that temperatures change for any given year every time CRU runs its data. Now we know the temperature was a specific number for this region in 1920. As they say: it’s history. When CRU changes the 1920 temp up a few tenths of a degree between its 2005 and 2008 runs you know you are working with theoretical numbers – not hard measurements. CRU admits it has multiple layers of unproven speculation inside their graphs (which take local values for a day, average them over months, and grid them over large regions). Even the root data in this graph is highly processed theory.

But also note the variability of temperature in Argentina – 2.9°C between the low in 1956 and the high in 1990. How would a 0.8° C increase over 100 years bother Argentina? That’s a 0.008° C increase per year. Biological systems can handle this easily. You couldn’t even tell if the temp was 0.8° C higher rom one year to the next (let alone from one century to the next).

Even more intesresting, for the months of MAM, Argentina has been steadily COOLING since 1990.

CRU wipes all this information out by going to the averaged values (‘trend lines’) of what is already spatially (Argentina) and Temporally (MAM) averaged local temp data! There is no way to discern any real long term trend from the slope of a line intersecting the 3-5 year rolling average of an estimated regional temperature from measurement sources that could be off regionally as much as the variability seen in the over temps. Its mind boggling silly.

Remember – no single site can accurately represent represent a 160 km region within 2-3° C!

Statistically speaking, Argentina has neither warmed nor cooled. And neither have most of the places on the planet.

BEST is the latest in a long line of sources noting that the temperature record is incapable of teasing out a trend less than 2-3°C, since measurement noise at the regional regional level and the natural variability over the years totally overwhelm the data points.

For all we know the entire warming trend is due to more measurements of higher fidelity coming on line, which in turn more accurately measured what was always there.

What we do know is those claiming humankind is driving global warming don’t know their math and science as well as their PhD may imply. That is if they have one in the first place …

Tags: BEST, CRU, GISS, Global Warming

Sorry folks, but Layman has breached my low bar for minimal etiquette. Comments are closed for now. Last thing I need to read is some loser’s homo-erotic commentary about me on my knees.

Maturity is a a big leap for some.

There is a theory about how a level of tolerance can creep into a neighborhood (or even a society) because people turn their backs on their little slice of paradise in America and then create a crime ridden, economically bankrupt mess. It is call The Broken Windows Theory:

The theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime.

It’s not rocket science. If you maintain your neighborhood (or society) crime will be less and value will go up. If you look the other way, crime will become the norm, people will give up on order and embrace chaos, and value goes down.

While we have all cringed in horror over the Penn State-Sandusky nightmare, one reaction has been consistent – why wasn’t this stopped when uncovered?

Simply because people looked the other way. It is simply another example of The Broken Window Theory. Instead of cleaning up their organization, Penn State let an animal run lose and terrorize little boys. They looked the other way. Now look at their little slice of paradise – it’s destroyed.

So, as a society, what are we doing about our Broken Windows? Let’s see:

In 2010, BrightSource was in deep trouble. It was $1.8 billion in debt and was losing money hand over fist–a $71.6 million loss on a mere $13.5 million in revenue. A company destined to go down the drain, one would think. But no! The Obama administration bailed out BrightSource to the tune of a cool $1.4 billion in loan guarantees.

How could that possibly have happened? Well, start with the fact that the principal investor in BrightSource is VantagePoint Partners. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a Venture Partner in VantagePoint. But BrightSource had an even more valuable contact than that:

Sanjay Wagle…was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.

So Obama appointed a fundraiser with interests in BrightSource to oversee a $1.4 billion dollar loan guarantee to his investment group – dwarfing the Solyndra mess which has the same illegal and unethical stench to it. Note how the loan is much larger than the losses to date, meaning they will lose 100’s of millions more before this disaster finally crashes down.

This is how the company describes itself as an investment risk (H/T Powerline):

We expect that our net losses and our negative operating cash flows will continue for the foreseeable future, as we increase our development activities and construct solar thermal energy projects. …

Our proprietary technology has a limited history and may perform below expectations when implemented on utility-scale projects.

We use proprietary technology that has not been previously implemented on utility-scale projects of the size and complexity of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, or Ivanpah, and Ivanpah may experience technological problems that neither we nor any of the third-party independent engineers that have reviewed our projects are able to foresee.

In other words, don’t waste a dime on these folks. They have no idea if their ideas will work and so far they have only succeeded in (a) losing 100’s of millions of dollars and (b) robbing the US treasury for capitol.

This is a seriously broken window. It is the political elite raiding the taxes of hard working middle America to line their pockets, jet around the world, buy expensive toys and be completely irresponsible for their results. It is sick.

Average people in this country are struggling to pay for school, healthcare, repairs to the car, a cheap vacation, etc. And these white collar thieves are appointed by the community organizer/head thief to waste the money taxpayers earned but were not allowed to use for themselves. It is pathetic.

If there is no outrage, if we do not fix these broken windows, this generation will be known as the ones who destroyed a great nation with their greed and laziness. It is time to clean out the cesspool in DC. It is time to fix the windows, put the abusers behind bars (so they know there is a severe price to pay for this criminal behavior) and shrink government back down to its bare minimum.

I would rather see a family spend their money on a few expensive and unneeded items than see the corrupt scion of a once great American family waste that same money on dodgy green snake oil. This is what the 2012 election should be about. Dismantling Dept of Energy, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Obamacare and all these other lame ideas that throw away hard earned money that they did not earn. All the stupid ideas proposed by big-government poseurs -who really just want to raid taxpayers because their too lazy or incompetent to create a real solution, a real business, a real service – need to be shut down.

We need bold change in DC, not tinkering on the margins, or the opposing power’s people grabbing at the same treasury for their purposes. We need change.

As  Herman Cain begins to feel the grinding pace of not only the Presidential campaign (which is brutal) but also the force of the Political Industrial Complex lined up against his bold plan to fundamentally change Washington (as opposed to Obama’s failed plans to change Amerika), we the frustrated voters need to step back from the media feeding frenzy and ask ourselves is Herman Cain the man to lead this nation?

Recently Mr. Cain has had a few minor policy flubs in lightening round interviews which he immediately walked backed. He admits when he misspeaks openly. The truth is though, no President better be making snap decisions in an interview. Yes, he should be prepared to make his case – but Herman Cain is right now operating without a Cabinet, without a full time professional cadre to provide advise, options and details from which he can craft a well thought out and balanced strategy. If we look at his 9-9-9 plan we get an inkling of how the man crafts his strategies.

And all that is positive. Given time and experts I am still convinced the man will develop well thought out strategies.

Besides, it’s not like we have not seen Presidents and Presidential Candidates make blunders on the campaign:

So if Obama gets a pass, so shouldn’t Cain? But of course Obama was the chosen winner by the media, and the same media wants Romney to be the anointed one for the GOP. Thus, no pass for CAIN from there – but we don’t need the media to explain life to us.

And let’s not forget Obama’s other epiphany – which took him and the same liberal media 2 brutal years to figure out:

Cain’s missteps are minor compared to Obama’s legendary failed results. Cain corrected his misstatements – Obama is intent on repeating his mistake by changing the name of the same government trickle-down policies that failed nefire and hoping the media can and he can dupe the voters into pretending their are fresh new ideas! Yeah, that’ll work. Speaking of screwy strategies…

The problem with Romney is he is way too much like Obama. Not only is his RomneyCare the same disastrous government intervention (and subsequent financial screw up) as ObamaCare. Not only does he believe in the clear science fiction of man-made global warming (which is different from the natural warming trend we recently experienced and which has disappeared or reversed over the last decade). Not only does Romney reach for government solutions first (instead of last, and only then with a gun to one’s head) – he is the same slippery talker who can rattle on for 90 seconds and say nothing concrete.

Obama’s only real gift was he could spin with slippery ease. He would prattle on and people projected their views to fill in his hazy words what they wanted to believe. Romney is also gifted in the non-binding,  misdirecting, dodging, political speak of politicians. That is why Newt Gingrich is so popular – he does not mince words. Neither does Cain. Newt’s only problem is he too is a creature of the Political Industrial Complex, and also known to switch positions when needed (same man-made global warming problem). While better than Romney, he is not as outside the DC cesspool as Cain is.

Interestingly, in Gallup’s latest poll the two front runners in terms of favorability are Cain and Gingrich, with Romney fading back:

Cain’s favorability has taken a temporary hit, and he may continue to slide. But the voters are cycling through their options because they know Obama is out in 2012. They just need to agree on the replacement (which won’t be perfect). It is clear they prefer a bold outsider who puts America before the Political Industrial Complex. All Cain has to do now is pivot to be a dedicated champion of the people – a Mr Smith Goes to Washington candidate – and he will become the front runner again. And I predict Newt is well on his way to stealing second place.

The other candidates have been evaluated and found wanting. The top 3 will be Cain, Newt and Romney – and Romney has no hope for the election because he splits the GOP and libertarians. Those too desperate to win they will take any old candidate are not in the majority this round. Obama is so damaged that we can have a bold candidate like Cain and still beat Obama. Obama is a cooked lame duck:

By contrast, only 35% have a positive view of his economic track record, and just 38% approve of how he is handling health care policy. It all adds up to an overall 46% approval rating for the president, with 52% saying they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job in the White House.

An incumbent is pretty much done when polling around 45%. In all the match ups against specific GOP contenders – and that wily generic GOP candidate – that is where Obama polls. No matter where the GOP candidate is Obama runs from 40-45%. They could be tied or 18 points behind, Obama is already sitting at those lame duck levels. More than half the people (not likely voters, just adults) disapprove of him, his policies and his results. And as Obama’s policies continue to grind into utter failure (health care costs rising, insurance being lost, unemployment remains high, deficits continue to mount, the housing market stays stuck in the basement) the number ready to try a new President will rise.

Folks need to step back and think (which I believe they are actually). Will we rush to judgement like we did in 2008 and allow ourselves to be led by the nose by the media and political industrial complex (who claimed McCain was the only option for the GOP – just like the claim now Romney is)? Or will we think for ourselves and send a clear message to DC?

The Tea Party movement and 2010 election (and many other elections since 2008) indicate the voters are going to send a signal.

Now we need the proper champion to carry that message – and I think Cain and Gingrich are the best of the pack to do so. And I think Cain has the overall edge since he is not a creature of DC. We shall see, but Romney has been anointed numerous times over the last few months – and it has not and will not happen. Cain has been declared done many times over the past few weeks – and it has not and probably will not happen either. The media and Political Industrial Complex (pols, consultants, talking heads, professional political pundits) are not in the driver seat this round. Just like they weren’t in 2010.

Update: Right on cue:

This might be the ultimate Cain clip, just because his response is the perfect synthesis of his good and bad attributes. On the one hand, he’s not going to pander with a slick answer designed to reassure some reporter. He’s doing this the Cain way. If you don’t like his response, keep walking. On the other hand: What?

Quintessential Cain.

Is the world warming? Why Yes! Ever since The Little Ice Age the world has been recovering from a multi century cold snap and nearing prior historic levels of warmth.

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum).^[1] While not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.^[2] It is conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries.^[3][4][5] though climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. NASA defines the term as a cold period between 1550 AD and 1850 AD and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.

Emphasis in blue is mine. Conveniently, the ‘modern’ long term temperature record begins in the 1880’s – even though it is incredibly spotty and this is the time in human history before electricity, world-wide synchronized clocks, radios, computers, etc. The error bars on this earliest segment of the ‘modern record’ are in the multiple degree range. Simple logic (which escapes people sometimes) reminds us that temperature readings have to be made the same way at the same time each day to remove basic measurement noise. Something not happening in the 1880’s, and I would wager was not happening uniformly throughout the world until post World War II (which created an enormous leap in technology). In other words, the data prior to 1940 is probably incredibly noisy and could not be the basis for detecting  sub-degree changes since. Basic math folks, no need to over think this.

One recent study out from Greenland was quite clear on this matter. It looked at temperature records in the ice (which are chemically straight forward and much more consistent than 1880’s era thermometer readings) and discovered today’s warm period (which peaked in 1998) is not uncommon, nor record setting. Here are the key graphs (Click to enlarge):

The firs graph shows from 1840 (around the middle of the last big dip in temps from the Little Ice Age) and clearly shows a rise to a peak in the 1930-1940 range (which is seen in every area of the world as I noted when I analyzed the CRU raw data leaked during climategate). The issue with alarmist temp data has always been that ‘corrections’ were made by alarmists to the raw data. Corrections that have shifted the recent period (last 60 years) of temps up by 0.5° C. This has given the appearance today is warmer than the 1930-1940 peak, but it isn’t (given the error bars on the temp record itself there is statistically no difference – something even GISS admits). Here is a snap of one areas record from CRU, showing clearly how there is little difference between today and the period leading up to World War II (green line for comparison – click to enlarge):

Each graph covers a 3 month period (e.g., MAM= March, April, May). If you read alarmist claims carefully, they are very careful to make their warming claim from 1950 – when there was a dip in temps.They pick a low spot to exaggerate the warming trend. Fairly lo- brow spin in my humble opinion.

Back in the day I used to do a lot of analysis on man-made global warming. This post contains links to what I see as my most important findings.

Anyway, the Greenland study goes on in the second panel of the image above to look back 1000 years – and lo and behold there is a period of warmth on par with today’s temps. The infamous Medieval Warm Period. And in the third panel the study looks back 2000 years we see the Roman Warm period begin to show up. Another figure from the study looks back 4000 years, and finds a 3rd warm period centered on the Bronze Age – all equal to or warmer than today.

Anybody blessed with three IQ digits to rub together can see that today is not much different from the past similar periods long ago. So therefore today’s temperatures are not likely AT ALL to be caused by man-made forces from modern civilization – Al Gore’s ego aside. Man has yet to obtain the ability to push Mother Nature around.

A somewhat sharp person would also connect the historic dots and realize humanity’s leaps in science, technology, civilization, etc all accelerated dramatically during these warm periods – when we all had time to do something other than just fight to survive.

Two points are obvious here then. The historic record shows a natural temperature variability independent of human pollution. But it also shows how warm periods drive human evolution. We are not the force warming the world, but we as a species (and all others on the planet as well – let’s not get egocentric again) do benefit from generally warmer temperatures (which brings with it higher CO2). The cause and effect arrow is reversed from what alarmists have predicted.

As the universe continues on its path, throwing all the alarmist theories in the process, those in the alarmist camp with a modicum of scientific objectivity are slowly (if not grudgingly) beginning to change their tune. Instead of dire runaway warming in 5 years or less, the new spin is …

When you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain. The draft gives even less succour to those seeking here a new mandate for urgent action on greenhouse gas emissions, declaring: “Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.

In other words – don’t expect to see a lot of global warming for 20-30 years. Just like there has been general cooling over the last ten years.

So now we will experience 3-4 decades without warming, all the while CO2 levels continue to rise. And still the alarmists will fail to admit their theories have been shattered completely. Anyone (left or right) who utters the view we have to address global warming or the science of AGW is settled is fair game to be ignored. And I guarantee you, those still singing this mantra are less likely to have the education or background to know what the science means (yes, I am talking to all those journalist majors in the news media).

It’s hard to find the energy to keep beating this dead horse. At some point you simply have to pity those who don’t have the objectivity or schooling to see beyond the busted myths.

Tags: Climategate, CRU, GISS, Global Wamring, IPCC, NASA