Honestylog.com

Automatic Lying

That's all this is about. Here's Warren's take. And Billy's. This bears reflection:

For years now, it's occurred to me that America would bring its characteristic (almost an instinct for) innovation to tyranny. This government would write new chapters in its annals, sprung from a uniquely American ambition and sincerity but bent so far around historic corners that all sight of home was lost. And so it would sink below its nature to something old and sick, but uniquely descended.

Get it?

Billy also linked this by Roy Spencer, who, of course, also notes that the polar bear population is likely at or near a record high since keeping track of such things. But what does that matter? There are "positions to stake out," "roles to play," "stances to take," and "poses to strike." ...All, euphemisms for plain old lying.

By the way, I picked up Spencer's book last weekend and would definitely recommend it. The sort of tragic-humorous-ironic style in that article is throughout the book. Here's a six-page excerpt (once you get there, click on the "Excerpt" link in the left sidebar).

What's Guaranteed to Set Me Off

Well if you must know, it'd be, for example, when a well-meaning employee emails a link to "Bike To Work Day" to all employees. Here's the touchstone of disgust:

Throughout the Bay Area, dozens of local events taking place during the month of May will get people excited about bicycling and the benefits it provides for public health, traffic reduction and our environment.

The best description I can think of on the fly is that of a smiley face telling you how great your sacrifices are going to be for everyone and everything else but you.

I love bikes. We got bikes. I use mine often, particularly so since the weather has warmed up. Why do I use the bike? Because it's the best thing for me, according to the context of the particular facts of the specific event in which I intend to use it. I live downtown, and it's usually far more pleasant, for me, to take the bike -- not the least of which is parking. And, it's just plain fun.

You know, it's always about guilt, isn't it? Either you're vermin who're messing up god's perfect universe, or you're more sophisticated -- not so weak minded as to believe in anthropomorphic gods. So, now you get to be vermin infesting mother earth. At root, it's the same formula: repent of your sins, and atone through self sacrifice.

Another Smackdown: Derbyshire Puts Ben Stein in Short Pants

Greg Swann quoted the best part. I'll take on the second best.

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”

The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)

And yes: When our greatest achievements are blamed for our greatest moral failures, that is a blood libel against Western civilization itself. What next, Ben? Johann Sebastian Bach ran a slave-trading enterprise on the side? Kepler started the Thirty Years War? Tolstoy instigated the Kishinev Pogrom? Dante was a bag-man for the Golden Horde? Why not go smash a few windows in Chartres Cathedral, Ben? Break wind in a chamber-music concert? Splash some red paint around in the Uffizi? Which other of our civilizational achievements would you like to sneer at? What else from what Waugh called “the work of centuries” would you like to “abandon … for sentimental qualms”? You call yourself a conservative? Feugh!

For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.

The whole thing: A Blood Libel on Our Civilization.

Repent, Sinners; The End of the World Draws Nigh

My bother emails some funny religious predictions for the end of the world as we know it, circa 1970.

Backpeddle

Wanna know how stupid they think you are?

"Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict"

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah, uh-huh. Until 2015. Right. Got it.

This is how it begins, folks. They're never going to just come out and admit to being the self-serving-at-your-expense con men they all are, with the thief and liar Al Gore at their helm. Instead, they're going to bank on how dreadfully illiterate and stupid most of the world's population is.

Setting the ethics of it aside, it's a damn good bet. Even when temperatures begin to decline, who do you think will be taking credit, and how many will extend it?

(link: McPhillips, who also links to a interview of Roy Spencer, author of Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor. That interview ("H3: Obama's Judgment") begins about 10 minutes in and you can just advance the slider bar to get there.)

Religion Masquerading as "Science"

Here's an email out to a friend, who thinks he's not religious. I beg to differ.

J:

In reference to our discussion of religion yesterday...

In the Telegraph UK:

In view of what is now at stake, such quasi-religious incantations masquerading as science are something we can no longer afford. We should get back to proper science before it is too late.

[emphasis added]

...

Climate Audit, by Steve McIntyre, the guy who in 2006/7 got NASA to admit to a Y2K bug in their climate model, which had established 2006 as the warmest year on record (i.e., the last year for which complete data existed). Once the error was corrected -- which I doubt you heard even a whisper about in the mainstream media -- 2006 falls to number 4, with 1934 being the warmest ever recorded, followed by 1998 in second, and 1921 in third.

...

Anyway, on the Antarctic ice pack, from yesterday, just a few hours after our conversation:

Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Reaches "Unprecedented" Levels

On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were “unprecedented” for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record. It was also the second highest single month in the past 20 years (second only to Sept 1996).

...

Warren Meyer, probably the best layman out there. Not a professional scientist, nor beholden to anyone, he's nonetheless Princeton and Harvard educated. He has a Climate Skeptic Blog, and his approach is somewhat unique, as thoroughly outlined in his 10-minute video presentation. Guaranteed you've never been exposed to anything remotely like this in the mainstream, though I've been thoroughly aware of it for some time.

Don't Panic - Flaws in Catastrophic Global Warming Forecasts

He has also put together a book: A Layman's Guide to Man-Made Global Warming

....

The floating garbage...I'd heard about it, but curiously have never seen a picture (like satellite, or even from an aircraft) that demonstrates that "a floating island the size of Texas" is a proper, accurate, and honest metaphor, rather than, say, "an area the size of Texas where the trash is X times more concentrated than on average."

I've spent years at sea, and I've seen my share of trash, every now and then (I've traveled in both those areas, i.e., off Hawaii, and off Japan -- extensively so the latter). Sometimes the encounters are more frequent, i.e., the concentration is greater, but it's never, ever remotely anything like an "island." That's just true-believe hysteria for the consumption of alarmists and human-haters.

...

Back to Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm quite certain there has been some warming, but the amount attributable to industrial civilization and to other factors like solar cycles and cloud-influencing cosmic radiation is simply not determined with any sort of the confidence that ought to be necessary before we go off and starve the third world by using their corn in our gas tanks, standing in the way of their industrial development, and instituting policy changes with economic impacts in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Back when the last IPCC report came out that declared "consensus," and that the "debate is now over," I said with some degree of confidence that that point will one day mark the high-water level of this whole fraud, and it's tracking right on course. Climate scientists, who were once content to sit by the sidelines and not make waves, figuring the science would get sorted out one way or the other, didn't like being lumped into a contrived, fraudulent consensus, and they've been coming out of the woodwork in droves. Just now, in the last year, skeptical pieces have been showing up in mainstream media. It'll be another 2-3 years before the public at large realizes that what they "knew" was an element of their ignorance and general gullibility.

...Or, you can just keep reciting your enviro-catechisms.

Note to Robert Lawrence

Just received in email, forwarded from a "Robert Lawrence," along with a linked graphic.

Dear Friends:

Texas has declared the ICR Graduate School Science Education program unsuitable for Higher Education in the state! The following ad will be distributed through Texas newspapers on Sunday, May 4. Please pray with us that many will "see" and understand the significance of this action in "The Long War Against God." Thank you.

Dr. Henry M. Morris III, CEO

On general principles, anytime I get a communique from a stranger that has "friend" in the salutation, I instinctively want to reach for my wallet, my mind, and my gun -- all at the same time.

My reply:

Get the hell out of my email with your imaginary friend fantasies, you primitive moron.

But since I bothered to blog this, allow me to be charitable and offer a word of advice: when you go begging to the state (the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in this case) for your "Certificate of Authority," you deserve everything you get.

Dipshits.

NewsFlash: Super Layman Climate Skeptic Warren Meyer Admits He's Been Wrong All Along

It's a sad day.

"...what's wrong with Earth Day?"

That was a question posed to me about my own essentials-only Earth Day post. I think my answer in comments requires it's own entry.

"...what's wrong with Earth Day?"

Here's a couple of people who took the time to spell it out.

Greg Swann
Warren Meyer

I encourage you to read and understand both. It's only the tip of the iceberg. In terms of fundamentals, what's wrong with it is: collectivism.

Both posts are must-reads, and take particular note of Don Boudreaux's post that Greg links to.

Let Me Get This Over With, First Thing

Fuck "Earth Day."

That is all.