...but we know how much atmospheric warming occurs because of man-made CO2 to the hundredth of a degree?
Meanwhile some scientists are finally acknowledging that there was a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age. But there's no concensus so it's not science, right?
* * *
Yet because "the science is settled" The EPA has made it impossible to build new coal-fired power plants. So when your electric rates start skyrocketing in a few years, you know who to blame.
Thanks, Obama! Thanks, Democrats!
At the same time the EPA has been spanked for trying to retroactively revoke a permit to mine coal. A permit it didn't even issue, one that was issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Yeah.
This is important because if it had been allowed to stand, it would have thrown into doubt every large project that was in progress. It would definitely suppress investment in new mines and power plants--and that is almost certainly the entire point of the EPA's attempt at shutting down this coal mine.
Borepatch has a story about refineries on the east coast being shut down:
700,000 bpd of refining capacity have been idled. With gas at $4/gal there were no bidders? How come? Migraine headaches? George W. Bush? Space aliens? The article doesn't say.No bet. I don't throw my money away on things like that.
It's what's not said that demonstrates the bias. What's the over/under on either the Federal or the Pennsylvania EPA regulations making these too costly to continue refining oil into gasoline?
This agency that Richard Nixon saddled us with in the 1970s has got to go.
* * *
So the media is trying to crucify this Zimmerman guy for shooting a black kid (Trayvon Martin? Did I spell that correctly?) and they're doing their best to make it look like this RACISS WHITE MAN DELIBERATELY STALKED AND SHOT A KID FOR BEING BLACK.
Starting here with a discussion of what the media is not saying about Trayvon Martin.
Stuff like this. Yeah, that Trayvon was just an innocent angel. Zimmerman beat himself up after shooting the kid.
The kid was suspended for graffiti (vandalizing school property) but not for having a bunch of womens' jewelry and a large screwdriver in his book bag. Four months later the kid was suspended again for having a ziplock bag with traces of marijuana in it, and a "pipe", at school. This was his third suspension; his first (before any of this) was for "tardiness and truancy". ("Truancy", for those of you in flyover country, means "skipping school". For the military folks, Absent WithOut Leave, AWOL.)
Oh, yeah. The kid's an angel. He decks a guy, slams his head on the sidewalk, sits on him and beats him--he's just acting in "self-defense" because he felt intimidated.
The guy he's beating up shoots him--that's murder.
And of course all the race pimps descend on the place like flies on shit. And for the same reason.
* * *
Liberal debate at its best: If you're female and think there should be an ultrasound performed before an abortion is done, you're not a true woman.
They always haul that one out. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is an "oreo": black on the outside but white on the inside. Justice Clarence Thomas is an "Uncle Tom". Sarah Palin is a self-hating woman. Etcetera.
You see, the proponents of abortion know that their greatest enemy is the maternal instinct. If a pregnant woman can see the baby in her womb--see it having a head and arms and legs and a heartbeat--that may make her change her mind about having the abortion. Especially the heartbeat; that has an emotional impact which makes it her child and not a mere mass of tissue.
And if the abortion doesn't happen, that's one less person who will support their cause later on. Whatever negative feelings the woman may have about her abortion, she'll rationalize them by saying, "I did what I had to do, because!"
But the woman who decides not to have an abortion--what will happen to her? How will she feel in the future about expanding the legality of it? When she looks at her child and thinks, "I almost killed him?"
These people know what they're doing. That's why they fight, tooth and nail, against any impediment to abortion, no matter how minor.
* * *
Yeah, that whole thing about the 4th Amendment? That's over. Social services can take your kids away if you try to stand on your 4th Amendment rights. Won't let them in to search your house? They'll take your kids away from you.
Pfft. That whole "due process" thing, that's for the proles, don't you know? The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals--which is essentially the court of the American NKVD--said it was perfectly reasonable for public officials to coerce a search of private property by threatening the refusing citizen with punishment.
Let me put it in perspective:
"Sir, if you don't let me search your car, I am going to arrest you for 'interfering with police business'."
Tell me that can't happen.
* * *
The Dow skyrocketed yesterday when teh Bernank said the job market was "positive but weak". Or however he said it.
Except, well... Borepatch has the truth of it: the "improvements" in unemployment are entirely chimerical; they're the result of statistical fiddling, not actual hiring.
He links Shadow Government Statistics which compare apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges.
Short form: the recession continues, nonstop.
* * *
This kind of thing is why I don't trust any textbook written after 1965. At least, any textbook which is on a subject that is not best described mathematically. You can trust engineering and hard science textbooks (physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics, astronomy) as any attempt to make them politically correct (according to leftists) will be laughably obvious--but not "social science", sociology, anthropology, ecology, meteorology, political science; even biology textbooks are not entirely trustworthy.
History--unless you can evaluate the ouerve of the writer of the thing, you need to be very careful about what you read, because the left has an agenda and does not mind one whit altering the facts to suit their needs.
* * *
How to make your book sell itself. Advice I need to heed.
* * *
In yesterday's mail was the copy of Borrower Arrietty that I had ordered last week. Just now I broke the shrinkwrap and tried the DVD out to make sure it would work in my main DVD player.
...if it hadn't, due to region coding or whatever, I would simply have dug out my old Apex; it's both region-free and Macrovision-disabled.
I bought my Apex at a time when I didn't own a TV with A/V inputs, so I needed Macrovision disabled in order to watch DVDs. (Otherwise? $350 for a new TV set on top of the $180 I paid for the DVD player. My dear boy, this was 1998.)
It turned out that a single PROM was all that needed replacing to make that happen, so I bought the PROM and swapped it. I still have the original PROM and it's the work of a few minutes to change it back, if need be.
All of this is mooted by the fact that I can download for free a program which would rip the video right off the DVD, completely bypassing the copy protection, and allow me to burn a DVD which would work just fine in any DVD player anywhere in the world.
Yeah. If I wanted to work that hard; but fortunately the DVD I bought was--as advertised--a legitimate, licensed, non-bootleg Region 1 DVD, and works just fine in my main machine, so I don't have to do anything.
(It might, in fact, be a "Region 0" DVD--one that doesn't have a region code. Doesn't matter one whit.)
So--to complete my collection of Miyazaki/Ghibli films--I need to get only Ponyo and Tales of Earthsea. But that can wait.
* * *
Bible study tonight; right now I need to get off my duff, head to the woods, and do some walking/jogging. I've been putting it off since Friday and today is Der Tag.