RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/winning_the_agw_science_debate_heres_how.html

The upcoming election battles may be unique in offering for the first time a debate about global warming. Neither Bush-Gore nor McCain-Obama chose to discuss the issue — maybe because they were not really that far apart. By contrast, Barack Obama has already announced that, if re-elected, he will make climate change an important priority — while Paul Ryan is an assertive skeptic on AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

The science of climate change is not just of academic interest, but has been leading to policies for large-scale changes in energy use and supply — with important economic consequences. The burden of proof for AGW therefore falls on those who call for such policies. They must demonstrate with reasonable certainty that human activities are causing global warming, that a future warming will produce significant economic and ecological damage, and that it would be more cost-effective to mitigate now rather than to adapt later. They must also be ready to respond to any critique of the underlying science.

A recent example of irresponsible AGW claims is a just-released statement by the American Meteorological Society — the same crew that cannot predict the weather three days in advance. The concluding section begins:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities. This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research. The observed warming will be irreversible for many years into the future, and even larger temperature increases will occur as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. Avoiding this future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. The ongoing warming will increase risks and stresses to human societies, economies, ecosystems, and wildlife through the 21st century and beyond, making it imperative that society respond to a changing climate.

I would start by asking AGW supporters the following question: “What is your single most important piece of evidence for AGW?” I have received many answers to this question; most of them can be disposed of in a trivial way. Some examples are:

* “Man-made CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere.” True, but is warming increasing as a result?

* “Climate models predict rising climate temperatures in the future.” True, but models are not evidence.

* “Glaciers are melting, sea ice is shrinking, storms are increasing, droughts and floods are increasing.” Even if any of these were true, they don’t reveal the cause and certainly cannot furnish temperature data like thermometers.

* “Sea levels are rising.” But they have been rising for 18,000 years, and there is no evidence that the current rate of rise is affected by temperature; 20th-century data show no acceleration.

* A common misleading reply by AGW supporters: “The past decade is the warmest in X years.” This may be true, provided X is chosen appropriately, but the current trend over the past decade has been approximately zero. (One must not confuse Trend [measured in degrees C/decade] with temperature [measured in degrees C]. According to climate models, it is an increased temperature trend that should relate to any increasing trend in greenhouse gases.)

But note also that climate seems to follow long-term cycles of about 1,500 years (Singer and Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years, 2007). If the “Bond-cycle” is active now, we may expect further, irregular warming in the present century and beyond — entirely due to natural causes, likely related to the Sun.

Finally, a common response simply appeals to the report of the U.N.-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). To which one should say: “OK, then let’s see if it holds up to scrutiny.” (Note that the “evidence” presented as crucial has been different in every one of the past four IPCC assessment reports.) The latest IPCC claim for AGW is laid out simply in the Summary for Policymakers on page 10 of the 2007 report: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely [i.e., 90-99% sure] due to observed anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases.”

* This claim is advanced in the SPM and eventually backed up by fig. 9.5 on page 684 of the 2007 report. The models are “fitted” to the observed temperature record from 1900 up to about 1970 by choosing suitable sensitivities and model parameters, using “expert judgment.” But the figure shows a large gap after 1970 between reported temperatures and unforced models (i.e., models that do not incorporate an increase in GH (greenhouse) gases).

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/intelligence-professionals-tell-obama-off

Few people really know what triggered the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Most believe it was the random discovery of the sites in aerial photographs taken by high-flying U-2 aircraft over Cuba.

But the U-2 flight was ordered after a “leak.”

Two-and-a-half weeks before the flight, an undercover CIA agent overheard a conversation in a bar in Cuba involving Fidel Castro’s personal pilot. He bragged the island nation would soon have nuclear weapons.

The agent’s subsequent report of this to Washington prompted U.S. President John Kennedy to order the U-2 flight that revealed solid evidence as to what the Soviet Union was doing.

During World War II, the phrase “Loose lips sink ships” evolved within the U.S. military to remind those entrusted with classified information not to talk about it.

Obviously, Castro’s pilot had never heard the expression. His loose lips would bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Although the end result proved beneficial to U.S. national security interests, the Cuban pilot’s lack of operational security — opsec — cost his country a nuclear weapons capability.

For as long as there have been military secrets to be kept, history is replete with examples of enemies eager to learn them. The United States has been victimized at times as there have been those guilty of failing to observe opsec, endangering the country’s national security, either through lax security or a personal need to promote themselves as knowing what others do not.

But it is inexcusable when it is our own leaders, with access to all our national security secrets, who violate opsec for political gain, endangering our national security in the process.

This is the clarion call of a recent documentary entitled “Dishonorable Disclosures: How Leaks and Politics Threaten National Security.” The film reveals concerns by retired military and intelligence professionals who have come together to emphasize the personal risks to our warriors involved in conducting classified operations and opportunities lost to use the intelligence those operations yielded as a direct result of leaks made by our own president — leaks members of both political parties agree endanger our national security interests.

The documentary cites several examples:

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/

Everytime you think it can’t get worse….

It’s quite bad enough that Iran is taking over the three-year chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement, — one of the largest voting blocs in the United Nations General Assembly — and is right now hosting a summit for the occasion in Tehran.

It’s even worse that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided to attend this summit, and is right now in Tehran, where he met Wednesday with terrorist-backing pro-genocide rulers such as the putative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and big boss Ali Khamenei (he of the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s modest title “Supreme Leader”) — you can see a photo of the Khamenei encounter here, courtesy of Iran’s Fars News Agency, in which Ban is leaning forward, head humbly lowered, presumably to catch every word of the enthroned ayatollah.

But on top of that display comes word that Ban, while touring the Tehran regime, has brought in tow a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Jeffrey Feltman, who just last month moved to the UN to serve as Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs. Actually, what delivered that news more powerfully than words was another photo, released by Iranian authorities, and, appropriately enough, dubbed “Photo of the Day” by Foreign Policy. The photo gives a wider view of Ban’s meeting with Khamenei, in which Khamenei sat authoritatively in a chair, and Ban sat humbly on a couch — and there, sharing the couch right next to Ban, is the American, Jeffrey Feltman.

Feltman looks ill at ease, eyeing the photographer while Ban’s attentions are all on Khamenei. There are plenty of reasons for Feltman to look uneasy. This is a diplomatic coup for Iran’s regime, which tops the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring states, thumbs its nose at UN and U.S. sanctions, and continues to pursue nuclear weapons, coupled with threats to America and America’s allies — including the genocidal threat to annihilate Israel. Nonetheless, not only has the UN Secretary-General gone to Iran to round out the guest list of Iran’s pals in “non-alignment.” He has brought with him, under the UN banner, a former high-ranking U.S. diplomat, to help pay court to Khamenei.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/08/29/how-to-replace-eric-holder-president-romney-style/

When I give speeches or interviews, I am often asked how the Department of Justice can be fixed. Of course Mitt Romney has to win in November to undo the damage Eric Holder has done. But winning is only step one. It is just as important that President Romney appoint the right person as attorney general. Appointing the wrong person will cover over the rot inside DOJ (and perhaps even strengthen it) because some conservatives will be less willing to criticize bad DOJ policies in a Romney administration.

So who is the right person to serve as Eric Holder’s replacement? First, let’s list some qualifications. The next attorney general cannot view the threat of terrorism as a law enforcement issue. It is a national security issue and should be treated as such.

Next, because racialist policies are being used to advance a broad leftist agenda to the detriment of American business, institutions, and state sovereignty, the next attorney general cannot be a coward, to borrow Eric Holder’s term, about racial matters. (Of course my New York Times bestseller Injustice details this very problem.) Candidates fearful of what the once-proud and now corrupt NAACP says about him or her are not qualified to serve in a Romney administration. Many others in the GOP sold out the dream of Constitutional racial equality in the face of such threats.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, the next attorney general must recognize that the vast majority of the career civil service will seek to thwart the administration’s goals. The next attorney general sadly must view many in the career civil service as an instrument of Democrat Party policy.

I’ve spoken with a broad range of former Justice Department officials about who satisfies these three requirements, and a number of names emerge.

In no particular order, the people who are best suited to replace Eric Holder are listed below.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315369/green-war-poor-robert-zubrin In a nearly full-page op-ed appearing in the business section of the August 25 New York Times, Cornell professor Robert H. Frank lays out the new green agenda for tax policy. According to Professor Frank, stopping global warming may require carbon taxes of about $300 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, and by implementing […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/advancing-the-rights-of-the-terrorists-making-a-mockery-of-justice

Patrick Dunleavy’s book: The Fertile Soil of Jihad is an absolute mustread on the conversion to Islam and recruitment for jihad being conducted throughout American prisons by radical Imams…..rsk

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2011/10/11/ruth-kinginterview-with-patrick-t-dunleavy-author-of-the-fertile-soil-of-jihad-terrorisms-prison-connection/

In about two weeks, the nation will remember that fateful day in September when the earth shook, the buildings fell, and the innocent were slain. On that day we vowed as a nation to bring to justice, or bring justice to, those who committed the acts of terrorism. And we did.

Leaders of the radical Islamic organization, Al Qaeda were either captured or killed. Osama bin Laden was taken out by a team of Special Forces while hiding in Pakistan. Khalid Sheik Muhammad (KSM), the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks was captured and is presently being held in Guantanamo.

With the influx of additional terrorists captured, there arose a debate regarding whether terrorists should be tried in the Courts or by a Military Tribunal. The controversy was never successfully settled one way or the other.

KSM is awaiting a military trial along with several other co-conspirators. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” was given his Miranda rights and charges against him were filed in Federal court. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in February 2012.

Numerous lesser known individuals were tried in the United States Courts and sentenced to long terms of incarceration with Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) imposed on their conditions of confinement.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Once jailed, the jihadist does not surrender – he just takes a different path.

Case in point: John Walker Lindh, “the American Taliban” captured in November 2001 in Afghanistan fighting along side al Qaeda and Taliban members against U.S. military forces.

Among the charges filed against him were conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and providing material support to terrorist organizations. He entered in a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

This year he joined with several other Islamic terrorists in filing suit against the Bureau of Prisons for violation of his rights. He states that he and the other terrorists have the right to

get together five times a day to “pray” in accordance with his religious beliefs. These would be the same beliefs that led 19 hijackers to kill almost 3,000 innocent Americans in one day.

He contends that allowing them to meet frequently for religious purposes does not pose a security threat. Hopefully the prison administrators will remind the Judge of the case of convicted Islamic terrorist El Sayyid Nosair. Nosair, while an inmate in Attica State prison in 1992, regularly met in the prison mosque with other muslim inmates for religious purposes It was there he convinced two of them to assist him in making phone calls to the Blind Sheik, Omar Adbel Rahman and several others as they conspired to bomb the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. The subsequent investigation revealed that Nosair utilized prison phones, visits, and religious privileges to commit a terrorist act while incarcerated.

Lindh is not the first, nor will he be the last to use the courts to challenge his prison time. The al Qaeda terrorist responsible for the bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania in 1998 has also asked a judge to loosen his prison conditions. Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was convicted along with Mahmoud Salim for the attack in Dar es Salaam that killed eleven and wounded eighty five.

http://www.jidaily.com/884a8?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=b98fddcadd-Insider&utm_medium=email

My friend and colleague Benjamin Kerstein has published a number of books, and this summer he released what is perhaps the most blistering critique of the radical leftist ideologue Noam Chomsky ever to appear in book form. It’s called Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite and is a collection of essays, reviews, and take-downs that originally appeared on his blog of the same name during a three-year period from 2004 through 2007.
I read most of the material in this book when it first appeared, and now I have it all in one place in trade paperback on my bookshelf. Kerstein and I discussed Chomsky and his new book last week.

MJT: What possessed you to spend three years writing about Noam Chomsky?

Benjamin Kerstein: That’s a huge question, and lest people start thinking I’m completely obsessive, I should note that I was doing a lot of other things at the same time. The short answer is 9/11. I grew up in an extremely liberal community where Chomsky was very popular, and as soon as 9/11 happened I knew that all those people I used to know would go straight to him in order to find out what they should think about it, and what they would come back with would be very nasty indeed. I regret that I was proven absolutely correct in that. It was really a disgraceful display by some very disgraceful people. Chomsky had become quite marginal in the years before that, but after 9/11 the left disinterred him and put him back on a pedestal. The New York Times, for example, ran a ridiculously fawning profile of him. He was being mainstreamed again and I felt strongly that someone had to say something.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3317/arab-leaders-destroyed-palestine The leaders of Hamas “run away, and do not even have the courage to take responsibility for their casualties. They treat Gazans like sheep for slaughter.” — Walid Awad Even though Zahi Khouri, in “The Palestine Romney Doesn’t Know”in the the Washington Post on August 10, charges the U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney with […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=283105
Butler, who received Frankfurt’s coveted Theodor Adorno Prize, came to prominence as an anti-Israel agitator.

Judith Butler, who last week received Frankfurt’s coveted Theodor Adorno Prize, came to prominence as an anti- Israel agitator almost a decade ago. In September 2002, Harvard president Lawrence Summers charged that “at Harvard and… universities across the country,” faculty-initiated petitions were calling “for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested.” In August 2003, Butler, then a professor at UC Berkeley and a signatory of nearly every anti-Israel petition circulating on American campuses, including the “divestment” one, published a rebuttal of Summers’s charge, called “No, it’s not anti-semitic,” in the London Review of Books. Summers had chivalrously gone out of his way to say that “Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” A primary aim of Butler’s counter-attack was to annihilate this distinction. Using the tu quoque (you too) strategy, she called Summers’s accusations “a blow against academic freedom, in effect, if not intent.” His words have had “a chilling effect on political discourse,” she wrote.

Apparently the chill had not taken hold at Harvard itself, which would in November confer honors upon Oxford’s Tom Paulin, who was famous for urging that Jews in Judea and Samaria “should be shot dead.” Butler perfunctorily assented to Summers’s recommendation that anti-Semitism be condemned, but she seemed incapable either of recognizing it in such (to her) mild “public criticisms” as economic warfare against Israel or calls for its dismantling or assaults on Zionism itself for interfering with suicide bombers.

Lawyer for Corrie family on PA TV in July:
Nazi Germany’s founding was legal
but Israel’s founding was theft

Lawyer Abu Hussein:
“Nazi Germany was a state based on the rule of law
for a short while… the State of Israel was founded
from the start on robbery and theft”
Israel is a “giant monster… we all want to step on its head,
but talking is not enough”
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=7296

by Itamar Marcus

Yesterday, an Israeli court ruled that Rachel Corrie’s death was a “regrettable accident,” but that Rachel Corrie “chose to put herself in danger.” Rachel Corrie was killed when she was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, at a time when Israel was working to curb terrorist activity in the area. Corrie’s family sued Israel for “wrongful death.” The family’s Israeli Arab lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said in a statement to the press:
“It’s a black day for activists of human rights and people who believe in values of dignity. We believe this decision is a bad decision for all of us – civilians first of all, and peace activists.” [NY Times, August 28, 2012]