Why Another Blog?

I've decided to set up another blog, (my other one is called Writer's Musings), because there are some topics just too weighty for that blog.

So here it is. In this space I'll explore more serious issues in more detail. I do not expect visitors to agree with me in all cases.
In this forum feel free to take off the gloves, grab a handful of mud and fight for what you believe in.

Simple rules, rather like cage-fighting in the blogosphere:
No direct name calling. No excessive profanity. No whining when smacked in the face with mud.
Sling inuendo. Feel free to ask leading questions even if in a snide tone.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Open Letter to Mother Nature

While this is a climate skeptic topic which some might think belongs on my climate blog, the fact that it includes political commentary, satire, heavy doses of sarcasm and punditry is why I’m posting it here. I'm trying to keep the climate blog more science-based.

Dear Mother Nature,

It seems you missed or otherwise misunderstood our earlier memo.

According to our complex and sophisticated computer models, CO2, though only .038% of the atmosphere, is the dominant factor in climate change. As we spew out CO2, temperatures are supposed to skyrocket, ice caps melt, cities flood and polar bears drown, but we are observing that you are failing to perform to the standards our models demand.

Additionally, you have failed to safeguard key information. This information, in the wrong hands, has the potential for confusing the ignorant masses (especially those who cling to guns, religion and the US Constitution) and making them think that you, not our complex and sophisticated computer models, are in charge of climate.

This must not happen. Terrorists working for the fossil fuel companies and other right-wing extremists have acquired some of this information and are already using it to sabotage our excellent work. The ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses are getting more and more confused.

The purpose of this memo then is to point out some of your specific deficiencies in this regard and the corrective actions you must take forthwith. Your failure to comply may result in our reporting your failure to perform to your higher authority, the Obamasiah. We certainly would not want bring you such embarrassment as he has ultimate power in all things. We know this to be true because he told us so in not one, but two autobiographies written before he even ascended his throne or had otherwise accomplished anything of substance.

Temperatures. While we understand that the attending special effects such as hurricanes, melting polar caps and drowning polar bears may take time to organize, temperature should have been simple.

Let us reiterate. According to our complex and sophisticated computer models as CO2 goes up, so does temperature – by a bunch! This is a very simple concept that even you should be able to grasp. What do you not understand?

A group of us got together and voted on it. We formed a consensus. You are obligated to adhere to that consensus. You may have heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? This is a powerful political organization consisting of fifty-two individuals who have faith in our complex and sophisticated computer models. They are capable of getting ignorant scientifically illiterate politicians to move large sums of money around in directions we desire. Don’t cross them or you won’t ever get published again or ever see meaningful funding for any research!

We even had them draw you several nice pictures that simplify the complex workings of our highly sophisticated models so that there would be no misunderstandings. We had them liberally sprinkle these pictures throughout their reports. Being tolerant of those like you who have no formal schooling or understanding of such complex things like computer models, we will assume (we’re experts at that) you did not see the pictures. Here again is one of those pictures, so that there is no confusion.



Information Security. This is closely tied to temperature. According to our sources, you left past code unsecured, namely the Vostok Ice Cores. According to this code, CO2 increases after temperatures increase. While this may have been how you did things in the past, our complex and sophisticated computer models mandate a new paradigm.

It is easy to see how such careless security can cause confusion in the minds of the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses who are not computer modelers. Armed with the information of how you used to do things, the fossil fuel terrorists and right-wing extremists are telling people that that is how things are.

While it is painfully obvious that our complex and sophisticated models are correct and your old code is wrong, we must spend inordinate time, resources and energy countering the misconception. Al, James and Rajenda are burning up a lot of jet fuel putting out the “fires”, so to speak, that your carelessness caused.

Special Effects. The ice caps. Why aren’t they melting? The obvious answer is your failure to perform on the first item, temperature.

According to our complex and sophisticated computer models, the Arctic is supposed to be gone last year, but we were willing to accept somewhere around 2012.

The Goracle put his immense reputation on the line with this promise. He won a Nobel Prize! Have you? He made an award winning science fiction movie! Have you? How dare you contradict this immense man!

You will have a difficult time meeting the approved timeline given your current performance as the graph below demonstrates. Note that this year’s Arctic sea ice is rapidly approaching intersect with the 1979-2000 average. It was supposed to be well below the 2007 average. This is a public relations disaster of the highest order and totally unacceptable.



You’ve also failed at the other end of the planet. According to our models, Antarctica should be melting. Creating minor ice shelf collapses in regions where there are other plausible explanations cannot mask your serious failure to warm the Antarctic in accordance with our precise instructions.

In fact, not only have you not raised temperatures over Antarctica, there is evidence that you have actually been lowering temperatures over all but an insignificant peninsula on the western side of the continent!

The Polar Bears. They deserve special mention. They are cute, cuddly, and like to drink Coke and party with penguins while watching the Aurora Borealis. They are supposed to be drowning and going extinct! I know it is difficult to do in one of your precious critters, but they were specifically chosen as the poster children of our project because of the above factors.

They can’t drown if the ice doesn’t melt and the ice won’t melt if you don’t raise the temperatures.

Worse yet, it appears that during the selection process for our global warming poster child, you failed to inform us of the following facts about how you engineered polar bears:

      1. Polar bears can swim – a LONG way. Like about a hundred miles. Have you any idea how many islands exist in the Arctic? At the rate you are melting the ice up there the bears will have no problem migrating to these islands or Siberia for that matter.

      2. Polar bears don’t only eat seals. We were led to believe that the only way the bears could get food was to ambush seals as they surfaced through holes in the ice that shouldn’t be there because the ice should be gone.

It turns out polar bears are very adaptable and eat other things too. They not only forage in human garbage for very rich food, but they also hunt humans! Now the latter part isn’t all bad since humans are the cause of all problems (according to our complex and sophisticated computer models). However, this adaptability means the bears don’t go extinct. In fact, there is evidence that their population is actually going up, not down.

This is totally unacceptable. Tossing three or four bears ashore after a storm was a good press release, but the numbers are insufficient to cause world-wide panic for the cuddly lovable bears.

The eating people part also diminishes their cuteness factor even though in doing so they do the planet a great service. To make matters worse, Knut’s buddies at the zoo in Germany tried to eat a woman who wanted to hug them and the whole affair was caught on film! People-eating poster children are bad for the program.



You’ve even embarrassed a team of crack publicity hounds sent forth on Arctic ice, sponsored by Royalty mind you, to demonstrate that Arctic ice is nearly gone and the polar bears have all drowned. First you nearly froze them to death with below normal temperatures which broke all of their complex and sophisticated ice-measuring equipment.

Then your polar bears started stalking them. This poor team has spent 53 days on thick, thick first-year ice in appalling freezing conditions trying to prove that the ice is melting and your bears, who are supposed to be drowning, are stalking them! Why, they’ve been dragging their little inflatable boat thingies and carrying immersion suits around for nothing. They expected to paddle the last 500km to the North Pole!

It has become clear that you are taking independent steps to direct climate in accordance with your own antiquated plan instead of following our modern plan based upon complex and sophisticated computer models. You’ve deliberately flipped the switches on virtually every major oceanic cycle to negative. This has had an almost immediate impact on local weather (lowering temperatures) which in turn confuses the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses and encourages right-wing extremists.

Most egregious of all, you’ve fiddled with the dimmer switch on the sun! What were you thinking? How can we continue to scare everyone into thinking that temperatures will forever rise, if you are messing with the sun's dimmer switch! Crank it back up! We need an active sun and sunspots! The sun creates solar winds that blow away nasty galactic cosmic rays that may influence cloud formations. Our complex and sophisticated computer models do not take clouds into account (because we don’t understand clouds) and as a result your actions are making us look wrong!

You are costing us a lot of other peoples’ money. We’ve already spent billions of dollars of other people’s money in research and marketing to convince them that a trace gas controls climate. We want to continue spending this money as long as we can squeeze it out of them, but your actions are shortening our horizons for accomplishing this.

We had them believing that, even though this trace atmospheric gas occurs naturally in quantities far greater than humans have produced throughout the Industrial Age, they are to blame. We had them believing that nothing except CO2 can cause temperatures to go up or down, as indicated by our complex and sophisticated computer models.

All is not lost and you can regain your credibility with us. We still have some people convinced that CO2 is a pollutant, even though it is essential to life as we know it. We got some of their most scientifically illiterate judges to vote on it and got their equally scientifically illiterate EPA administrators to take it from there. We have some of them convinced that they need to commit economic and national suicide so that we can control everything.

However, time could be running out. This disaster may be wasted if you don’t immediately get temperatures going up again in accordance with our complex and sophisticated computer models. Otherwise, their legislators may ignore our models and decide to wait us out. There are signs that the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses are stirring and threatening to throw the bums out under the massive disinformation campaign being waged in the main stream media by the right-wing extremists.

Some of us have a lot riding on this whole global warming project. We own/participate in companies that will make us personally much richer if we can sell carbon credits and your poor performance is cutting into the profit margin. Others of us who are geeky computer types, mostly just want to keep playing with our complex and sophisticated computer models, but that takes LOTS of money because we need new super-super-computers. The old ones just aren’t cutting it.

Our allies in the IPCC hate the West (especially the USA) and want us to commit economic and national suicide, but if having them on our team gets the rest of us what we want, they’re OK with us. But their help, as powerful as they may be in the funding process, won’t be enough if actual observations continue the current downward trend. The right-wing extremists are watching your performance!

Oh, and jet fuel costs a lot too. Having to fly all over the world explaining to everyone why you are not cooperating is getting expensive. You could help us reduce our carbon footprint for this crusade by simply following our script.

Mother Nature, get with the program or we will be forced to report your intransigence to the Obamasiah. If he waves his hands, things will happen and it won’t be pretty!

Sincerely,

Failed Divinity-Journalism Student/Failed Presidential Candidate, The Team, A Rich politically motivated financier who hates America, UN politician Pseudo-Scientist and other nitwits who simply want to control other people’s lives.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Why Are We in Afghanistan?

I must confess complete incredulity when I hear that question, especially when uttered by an American. Nothing demonstrates our short attention span as a nation more than that question. Will we ever learn? So for all those who ask the question, "Why are we in Afghanistan?"


THIS IS WHY!










They won't just go quietly into the night, even though the Obamasiah has "Hussein" as his middle name. Electing this bumbling fool did nothing to improve our situation on the world stage. His recent idiotic idea about talking to "moderate Taliban" was met with derision by the Taliban. Their official spokesman called it a "lunatic idea" and observed that there is no such thing as a "moderate Taliban." Uh duh!

One of the Afghans I work with asked, "Who are these moderate Taliban? I've never heard of such a thing. Is this something like a moderate murderer? This is insane!"

The Obamasiah's talk about an "exit strategy" is defeatist. In typical leftist fashion it is cover for moving the goal post. Change the definition of victory so that expectations are lowered. When we meet the more easily attained "exit strategy" goals, pull the plug and run.

The Taliban are NOT winning here, but we could be maneuvering ourselves into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Taliban are NOT resurgent, but they are reslient. There is a difference. If we cut and run, if we cede this country to these animals, these scenes will be repeated again.




Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) Photo.
Beatings of women in the streets were an everyday occurrence under the Taliban.


RAWA Photo. The execution of Zarmeena.
After enduring years of brutal abuse, Zarmeena killed her husband while he slept.
She was sentenced to death.
Under Islamic Law, the victim's family may forgive the murderer.
Her husband's family forgave her.
However, since they had already announced the execution
and invited thousands of guests to attend, the Taliban refused to spare her
in violation of the very Islamic Law they pretend to follow.
Zarmeena's seven children were forced to watch the execution.