Obama: 'Time for talk is over' - - POLITICO.com
Quote (emphasis added):
COPENHAGEN — A visibly angry Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet at China and other developing nations Friday, declaring that the time has come "not to talk but to act" on climate change.
“The time for talk is over, this is the bottom line: We can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be part of an historic endeavor, or we can choose delay,” he said.
I'm really getting tired of this line, we've heard it before. President Obama isn't seeing results on an issue like health care or climate change, and instead of trying to figure out what the problem is he just pronounces that "the time for debate is over."
Does he suppose that all of us who hear him will say "Oh, yes, we didn't realize...sorry about that. Certainly. Let's vote on this right now" and then give him what he wants? He addresses leaders (who have far more experience than him) as though they are children, or at best unruly students. He doesn't offer a solution, he simply tells us that it's time to stop doing what we think is important and instead do what he wants us to do.
I thought we might have elected a leader. Instead it appears we've elected a bloomin' cuckoo clock.
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UPDATE:
From The Guardian:
Barack Obama's speech disappoints and fuels frustration at Copenhagen
Many reactions were strongly critical of Obama. Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, described Obama's speech as "ridiculous" and the US's initial offer of a $10bn fund for poor countries in the draft text as "a joke".
I think I can understand why. Think about China in this: we're running off money borrowed from them. So...we're gonna borrow $10 billion from China so that we can contribute it to this world fund, from which China will get...ummm...something less than $10 billion back? I'm a tech writer, not a financial expert, but I can't see how that deal works for China at all. Wouldn't they just be better keeping their $10 billion and applying it themselves?
Now even with the disclaimer that the Telegraph isn't exactly neutral...if the Russians said anything like this, it isn't good for supporters of the AGW religion.
Here's a segment from the Telegraph, it's a quote from another source (linked in original). The emphasis appears on the Telegraph site, but not in the original document:
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
That would skew the numbers a bit.
Quote:
COPENHAGEN (AP) - New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N. climate conference. Northern polar sea ice has been retreating dramatically. These new projections suggest an almost-vanished summer ice cap much earlier than foreseen by a U.S. government agency just eight months ago.
...and a bit further down...
Gore cited new scientific work at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, whose Arctic ice research is important for planning polar voyages by Navy submarines. The computer modeling there stresses the "volumetric," looking not just at the surface extent of ice but its thickness as well.
"It is hard to capture the astonishment that the experts in the science of ice felt when they saw this," former U.S. Vice President Gore
told reporters and other conference participants at a joint briefing with Scandinavian officials and scientists, his first appearance at the two-week session.
"Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years," Gore said.
There's just one problem...the guy who actually did the study? Well, he says "No, that's not what the numbers show."
The Times of London includes this information:
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Al Gore is being sure of what he hopes for, and certain of what he does not see.
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Sports Medicine Pioneer Subject of Doping Inquiry
OK, neither the article nor the online headline are amusing in any way, but take a look at this image of the print version and see how the headline reads:
Doctor Who Treated Top Athletes is Subject of a Doping Inquiry
Doctor Who treated top athletes?
No, no, no, no.
The link above leads to a somewhat lengthy article that is part of the "Climategate" scandal. The best explanation of what this article is about is found in the early paragraphs:
People seem to be missing the real issue in the CRU emails. Gavin over at realclimate keeps distracting people by saying the issue is the scientists being nasty to each other, and what Trenberth said, and the Nature “trick”, and the like. Those are side trails. To me, the main issue is the frontal attack on the heart of science, which is transparency.
Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists attack the work by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.
As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data that they built the global temperature record out of. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I’m an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather. I’m not “directed” by anyone, I’m not a member of a right-wing conspiracy. I’m just a guy trying to move science forwards.
The recent release of the hacked emails from CRU has provided me with an amazing insight into the attempt by Steve McIntyre, myself, and others from CA and elsewhere to obtain the raw station data from Phil Jones at the CRU. We wanted the data that was used to make the global temperature record that is used to claim “unprecedented” global warming. I want to give a chronological account of the interactions. I will reference the email numbers so that people can see the entire emails if they wish. While we don’t know if all of these emails are valid, the researchers involved such as Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann that clearly indicate that they think they are authentic.
It seems like a simple enough request: "Give us the raw data, and let us run the numbers ourselves." If the data is good, both skeptics and the neutral ought to come to the same conclusions as the CRU and global-warming believers. Not all skeptics would be convinced, but some of them would be...as well as the neutral.
But as the e-mail trail shows, the CRU blocked, stymied, stalled, and downright refused every step of the way. Denials based on a lack of information turn out to be based on lies. Intentionally incomplete data sets were released.
More frightening than that is the implication that in some cases the data simply does not exist. The CRU knew this, but could not say so for fear that the whole global-warming house of cards would collapse.
It would appear that the scientists at the CRU believe in global warming, are convinced of the reality, but base this belief on...no solid evidence. They proceed on the simple faith that it exists.
I can't help but recall a Biblical passage, Hebrews 11:1, where St.Paul defines "faith." In the King James Version it says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Similarly the New International Version translates the line as "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Emphasis added both times.)
The CRU scientists are practicing faith in regards to global warming.
It's a religion.
ME: I don't want anything to happen to you!
GWEN: Nothing will!
SPENCER: Yeah, Mom. Don't be a baby.
http://www.shopecko.com/product/index.j
So confused...
- Mood:
confused
On the one hand, she probably has a point. Much of the world's troubles do stem from the fact that there are seven billion of us crowding the planet. That's about three times the figure that lived here when I was born.
On the other hand, Ms. Francis is apparently a mother of two.
Why is it that so many times when people come up with radical plans to save the (fill in the blank...planet, economy, transportation system, you name it) it just seems to conveniently work out that the originator of the idea won't actually be impacted by the idea?
Quote:
Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.
Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.
The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.
He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.
According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.
Once again, an action that snubs and annoys a "traditional ally." It continues to fit in with my theory that Obama doesn't quite get it, that he thinks our "natural allies" won't mind his actions, that he can do what he want with them but they'll always be there because everyone loves him. It's only our enemies that need be treated well, so that they can be won over. Sadly, he's had little success on the second half of the theory.
People accuse George W. Bush of pissing off half the world. That may be true, but no one expected Barack Obama to piss off the other half as well.
I've had a theory about global warming for a long time, and now with the revelation of the leaked CRU files it's starting to seem less and less like a crazy fantasy and maybe more and more like an explanation.
The theory is that scientists have essentially figured out the following.
Is the earth getting warmer? Yes.
Why? We don't know. It might be the result of human action, or it might be some natural planetary cycle.
Will it stop before it causes a planetary disaster? We don't actually know, largely because we don't actually know the cause of the warming.
What if it's the result of human action? Maybe we can figure out the cause and stop it before it gets really bad.
And if it's caused by something else? It's quite possible that we're all buggered, and within a few decades the civilization on this planet will very closely resemble Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome or A Boy and His Dog.
Shouldn't we tell the politicians and people that we don't know why the earth is getting warmer? Are you kidding? If we tell them that, then they'll figure out that we don't actually know how to stop the warming, and then we're really buggered. Imagine a world full of people who suddenly realize that they are the likely the last generation of humanity. Have you read Childhood's End? People don't react well when all hope for the future is gone. There will be panic, and a collapse of social structure when people realize that there's little point in life-long work or commitment if life is going to be much shorter than we'd been lead to believe. The best case scenario you can hope for is The Bucket List multiplied by seven billion people.
Well, then, what do we do? Tell them the warming is caused by human action. Tell them there's a way to stop it, reverse it. Tell them it will take a long time but it can be done. If we're right, then we've solved the problem. We've got nothing to lose.
And if we're wrong? Then at least by the time we reach the point of no return in a few decades, we'll have shortened the period of social chaos from several decades down to maybe ten or fifteen years. It will be a shorter period of pain.
--------
I'm not saying there's a conspiracy in the sense of meetings, instructions, and plans. But I would be willing to bet that more than one climatologist has gone through the mental exercise above, and reached the conclusion above. "We don't know why the world is getting warmer, but if we pretend that we know we can stop panic. Thus we've got to assure people that it's C02 that is to blame, and ensure that our studies and evidence always point the finger to greenhouse gasses."
The funny thing is, the earth has been hotter in the past than it is now, and the effects were actually very good. (See "Medievil Warming Period" and "Roman Warming Period," but you're going to have to look for temperature graphs that haven't been jiggered by the CRU team to flatten out the curves. That data used to exist but is more difficult to find now, and that's one of the lesser understood parts of the CRU file leak scandal.)
To me, the CRU files read of desperation, as though the numbers weren't working out for greenhouse gasses but that it was critical, vital to somehow show that they were. There are plenty of theories about why this might be so.
Mine? I think the scientists really didn't want to let on that they didn't know the cause, don't have a solution, and can't tell us if this is all going to turn around by itself or if it's going to kill us.
It's likely that no scientist wants to be in that position.
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Речь идёт о Латиноамериканских танцах, таких как Сальса, Меренге, Бачата, а точнее об обучении этим прелестям жизни.
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Ahmadinejad Reportedly Claims U.S. is Blocking Return of Mankind's Savior
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Yes, there is snow. Yes, there are bears, YES, YOU WOULD DIE A HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DEATH, EITHER BY MAULING OR EXPOSURE. Stay in the UK where it is nice and relatively safe and bear-free.
Love, the people who like you lots and lots and wish to ensure your continued survival on this planet.
- Mood: nervous
I'm not sure when I'm going to use them or what I will make with them or why I even bought a package of egg noodles but this is neither here nor there.
They sit in the pantry on the third shelf up from the floor. They sat there, untouched, since the day I bought them and placed them there. I tend to keep this door to the pantry open, for no apparent reason other than it's not really in the way of anything. I would pass by this package of egg noodles daily and think to myself that I should make something with them one day.
This evening (aka just now) I passed by the package of egg noodles and noticed something different. There were considerably fewer egg noodles in the package, which was still exactly where I had put it once I returned home from the supermarket after buying it. In fact, there were probably 95% fewer egg noodles in the package. I grab them, and the package is ripped open, nearly empty. There are no loose egg noodles in the pantry. Spontaneous combustion of an egg noodle package has been ruled out.
I become moderately creeped out.
A quick inventory of the rest of my place finds that everything else is exactly where it was left. The crap that's mildly messy is still here, mildly messy. Nobody cooked anything or took anything from the fridge. The rest of the pantry contents are completely intact. Everything else is exactly where I left it. The valuables that are left out (laptop, computer, digital camera, 360) are still here. I appear to have been hit by a robber who wanted egg noodles. And nothing else.
I'm completely at a loss for an explanation.
- Mood:
weird
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