Those making the claim that we need to cut development drastically to stop human-caused global climate change have been saying "the debate is over" about three, basic items for about 20 years:

• The earth is warming
• Man is causing it
• We have to cut back development to stop it

That there's no debate used to be almost true of the first point. It's never been true of the other two, though it was closer about 10 years ago: a growing number of scientists dispute how much man is the cause of the warming, pointing to factors like solar effects on clouding, ocean currents, and the earth's rhythmic cycles; and sensible people everywhere note that even the most drastic plans to cut back will not affect global temperature enough to matter, and we just have to get used to warmer weather. However, on the first point -- that the earth is warming -- there's been very little serious disagreement.

Until recently. Today, that's on the table, too. Two things have happened:

1. The earth's measured temperature stopped rising around 1998, and this year it fell dramatically. There hasn't been any warming for 10 years, so far as we can tell.
2. It's becoming apparent that much of the warming we've seen in the last 30 years has been because of bad measurements.

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A Communist??? What is this, 1953? Are we the Un-American Activities Committee? First he was a Muslim, now he's a Communist? I know, I know, but please, bear with me...

I just naturally tend toward extremes, so I deliberately temper myself when I see something that strikes me as alarming. Consequently, I didn't say a word when Hot Air posted the picture from a Fox News broadcast that showed one of Barack Obama's campaign offices with a Cuban flag on the wall, with a stenciled image of revolutionary murderer Che` Guevara  on it. I just figured that office would be getting a call from the Mother Ship sometime soon. Not that Obama would be all that irritated by it, but I didn't figure it meant much besides some hard lefties were working for Obama.

I also pretty much ignored it when Politico reported that Obama had sat down with 60s radicals Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers in a local Chicago political meeting. Those are two very scary, unrepentant terrorists, but it was 1995, he met with them once, they actually had clout in the neighborhood (both teach at the University of Chicago now), and I figured there was not going to be any serious fallout to the Obama campaign. Yes, if it had been McCain and Rev. Bob Jones it would have been front-page news on the Times for 3 days at least, but the press flacks for the Democrats, we all know it, and that's that.

Then, I noticed this addition from Hot Air. See-Dubya there received links from readers: one showing a conference in 2002, where Obama and Ayers spoke together as two members on a panel discussing "Intellectuals in a Time of Crisis," the other showing Obama joining the Weatherman duo giving testimonials for Rashid Khalidi, an Israel-hating Columbia professor, in 2005. And Craig Kincaid at Accuracy In Media reports that Obama and Ayers both serve on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago.

Showing up on the same panels a few times doesn't make Obama and the Weathermen friends or associates, though the Woods Fund contact suggests they're at least acquaintances. Sitting on the same panels does, however, suggest that Obama thinks like those two on more than one issue, which is why their paths are crossing. (I suppose it's not theoretically impossible that Obama was called to balance other views, but balance isn't often among the stated values of gatherings that invite ex-Weathermen, so I regard this as unlikely.)

But in the light of the incidents above, I'm now paying closer attention to a several articles I've run across, which appear to be both accurate and relevant:

Read more at Plumb Bob Blog...

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration of the US Department of Commerce (NOAA) announced last Thursday that a team of scientists studying the economic impact of hurricanes over the past century have discovered that the rise in hurricane damages are due entirely to increases in population, wealth, and infrastructure, not any increase in the frequency or destructiveness of hurricanes.

A team of scientists have found that the economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure, and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not to any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes.

“There is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts.”

You can find the actual paper here.

Question: did you read about this in the newspaper, or hear about it on TV news? If not, why not?

Answer: I could find no news organization on the Internet that reported this story, though a number of conservative blogs picked it up. The news media, wholeheartedly invested in promoting the political agenda underlying the Human-Caused Global Climate Change hoax, will not report scientific findings that do not support their thesis. Therefore, if it happens to be true that humans are not causing global warming, you will never know about it unless you research the topic for yourself.

Read the rest of the article at Plumb Bob Blog...

I was reading a New York Times article discussing efforts within the Democratic party to avoid a bitterly contentious convention, when I came across this comment regarding Al Gore's role in settling disputes:

Several allies said that because of Mr. Gore’s bruising defeat in 2000 presidential voting in Florida, he would have the credibility with Democrats to carry the message that the will of the people should be respected.

The sad irony here is that the Florida 2000 vote illustrated the precise opposite of what the Democrats claim. Gore took deliberate, cynical action to destroy the public's confidence in the voting process in a vain attempt to change the outcome of an election he knew he had lost. I can think of no action more dismissive of the will of the people than to attempt deliberately to change the outcome of an election that's been settled. His efforts to discard absentee ballots of military personnel over technicalities that had never been a problem in previous elections (the lack of a certified post office on board ship, for example) further illustrates his cynicism. And yet, this cynical effort earns him credence as a defender of the people's will among Democrats. This is an example of a cultural phenomenon I've come to call the screeching inversion. The short version of the screeching inversion is that the most immature among us get to pretend that they're moral paragons, while the most mature are treated as moral pariahs, simply because the immature screech louder and a lot more often. Thus, in a morally deteriorating society, evil gets tagged as good, and good, evil.

Here's how it works:

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