RUTHFULLY YOURS

Judith Curry is Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Stripped of dogma and green evangelism, the key issue is this: the inadequacies of current policies based on emissions reduction are leaving the real societal consequences of climate change and extreme weather events largely unaddressed, whether caused by humans or natural variability.
Noted climate scientist Judith Curry neatly set out the weaknesses of the human-caused catastrophic global warming excitement when she testified this month before a US House of Representatives committee. Her written submission is here , but her verbal introduction is below:

THE central issue in the scientific debate on climate change is the extent to which the recent (and future) warming is caused by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions versus natural climate variability that are caused by variations from the sun, volcanic eruptions, and large-scale ocean circulations.

Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change. This includes

The slow down in global warming since 1998
Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide
Climate models that are predicting much more warming than has been observed so far in the 21st century

While there are substantial uncertainties in our understanding of climate change, it is clear that humans are influencing climate in the direction of warming. However this simple truth is essentially meaningless in itself in terms of alarm, and does not mandate a particular policy response. We have made some questionable choices in defining the problem of climate change and its solution:

JUST FOR THE RECORD: LAMAR SMITH RANKS A MINUS 4 FROM THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE INDICATING A STRONG PRO-ISRAEL RECORD…..RSK
The United States is now the world’s largest oil and natural gas producer, having recently overtaken both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Two decades ago, no one would have believed it. The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has fueled this energy boom. Fracking has unlocked vast amounts of what used to be considered economically inaccessible oil and gas. Increased domestic energy production has benefited the environment, the economy and hardworking families who now enjoy reduced energy prices.
Natural gas provides affordable, clean and abundant energy that heats our homes and cooks our food. U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions have also fallen dramatically in recent years, in large part because of the use of natural gas in generating electricity.

California doesn’t need a global carbon-emissions regime; it needs a better water system.

That California’s catastrophic drought is a result of global warming has become a commonplace of contemporary political rhetoric. That truism isn’t true: Most scientific accounts of California’s current dry spell link recent low precipitation to naturally occurring atmospheric cycles, not to global warming. Indeed, most of the global-warming models relied upon by those advocating more-invasive environmental policies predict that warming would leave California with wetter winters — winter precipitation being critical to the snowpack-dependent state — rather than the drier winters at the root of the state’s current water crisis. What some studies do suggest is that warmer temperatures make the effects of scanty precipitation more intense for California’s end users of water, a reasonably straightforward proposition — higher temperatures will probably contribute to higher demand for water and will certainly contribute to the much more significant problem of evaporation, which steals tremendous amounts of water away from California’s outdated storage-and-conveyance infrastructure and imposes substantial water losses on old-fashioned irrigation systems.

How should one think about the unfolding allegations rocking the Clinton-Industrial Complex (which includes both her campaign and her foundation)? By now, you may have heard about Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. The book isn’t even out yet, and Clinton’s team is already sheltering in place like Churchill’s cabinet during the Blitz. That’s in part because Schweizer, a conservative author and dogged investigative journalist, has teamed up with the notorious right-wing rags the New York Times and the Washington Post to essentially re-report and expand on allegations made in the book.

Because it would be absurd to claim that these papers are part of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” — which won’t stop flacks from saying it — they are much better equipped to drop the payload over the target. Even Lawrence O’Donnell, a Democratic water-carrier of such sterling reliability that he makes Gunga Din look like a slacker, had to concede on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the Clinton campaign no longer has a Schweizer problem. It has “a New York Times problem.” It’s hard to boil down the Times’ deeply detailed account, but the broad brushstrokes are as follows: A Canadian business wanted to sell its uranium mines in Kazakhstan and the U.S. to a Russian state-run — i.e., Vladimir Putin–run — firm. I know what you’re thinking: What could go wrong? In order to grease the skids — allegedly, of course — Canadian uranium moguls Frank Giustra and Ian Telfer gave millions to the Clinton Foundation and arranged for $500,000 speech by Bill Clinton (whose speaking fees mysteriously skyrocketed after his wife became secretary of state), bankrolled by a Russian investment bank with interests in the deal. While in Kazakhstan, former president Clinton agreed to hold a joint press conference with president-for-life Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. (He’s been getting “re-elected” with just shy of 100 percent of the vote since 1989.)

This is a vote of no confidence in Abbas and Fatah.

When you tell your people that Jews are awful, and do not want peace, and just want to kill Arabs and destroy their homes and holy sites, then people say, “This means Hamas is right. We should be killing the Jews and not making peace with them.”

Hamas has now apparently realigned with Iran, which is “rebuilding relations with the military wing of Hamas,” and has recently sent Hamas “tens of millions of dollars.”

Hamas’s crushing victory in the April 22 student council election at Bir Zeit University shows that the Islamist movement continues to maintain a strong presence in the West Bank.

Hamas supporters on campus won 26 seats, compared to 16 for their rivals in the Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The results of the election mean that Bilal Barghouti, who is serving 16 life terms in prison for his role in a series of suicide attacks against Israel, has become the “Honorary Chairman of the Bir Zeit University Student Council.”

There are moments in history when we are called upon to stand up in behalf of a great and transcendent cause. Now is such a moment. Today, April 23rd, 2015 marks the 67th year of Israel’s independence. For many, Israel’s survival and success represents Ground Zero in our fight to save the world from the barbarism marching across the globe under the banner of the Crescent.

The battle raging today between those who wish to delegitimize and destroy Israel, as opposed to those who see its establishment as a miraculous and inspired saga (the Hand of God), is another chapter in that old battle between the forces of light vs. the forces of darkness, the spirit of the Divine against the stench of idolatry, freedom and dignity vs. tyranny and debasement of humankind. It is our battle, and it’s our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fight the good fight and stand against the impurity of the cynics and scoffers on the left and the barbarians at the gate. We are lucky to be living in a time when our turn at the plate is crucial and all-defining.

Israel Independence Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day are here.

Obviously these two milestones are related in the sense that out of the ashes of the European genocide against Europe’s Jewish minority (not to be confused with the similar and nearly simultaneous Muslim Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish minority once living in the Middle East, now presently applied to Christians there) arose the modern state of Israel on the soil of the ancient state of Israel.

Here in America most Jewish communities spend a full 24-hour period on Holocaust Remembrance Day reading the names of Nazi victims. By reading their names, they are in some small but meaningful way not forgotten. And by remembering them as people, larger society is supposed to remember what happened so that people, and government, do the necessary things so genocide does not happen again.

This is all sound logic to me, although it is questionable whether it works, or not.

In testimony last week before the House committee in charge of State Department funding, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power acknowledged that the Obama administration intends to abandon the US’s 50 year policy of supporting Israel at the United Nations.
After going through the tired motions of pledging support for Israel, “when it matters,” Power refused to rule out the possibility that the US would support anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council to limit Israeli sovereignty and control to the lands within the 1949 armistice lines – lines that are indefensible.
Such a move will be taken, she indicated, in order to midwife the establishment of a terrorist-supporting Palestinian state whose supposedly moderate leadership does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, calls daily for its destruction, and uses the UN to delegitimize the Jewish state.
In other words, the Obama administration intends to pin Israel into indefensible borders while establishing a state committed to its destruction.

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” The speaker is Thomas Gradgrind. He is talking to two adults, the school master and Josiah Bounderby and to a class of students, each known principally by a number. The quoted sentences form the first few lines of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. Today’s focus on STEM programs, Common Core and standardized tests – the robotic production of students – suggest that the 160 years separating the publication of Mr. Dickens’ novel and today have brought only limited change in the desire for centralized control and the unpredictable whims that are fundamental to human behavior.

Eric Cohen’s eloquent and inspiring essay in Mosaic outlines a series of ideas that are both truly Jewish and truly conservative. I agree with them: the sanctity of the traditional family structure; a Jewish nationalism that joins morality, Jewish identity, and self-preservation; and a measured embrace of free markets. For Cohen, these ideas form part of a call to arms, a call that is directed not only to like-minded conservatives but that might ultimately fire and perhaps rescue Jews on the brink of assimilation, weakness, and self-destruction.

And yet there is something missing. Midway through this sweeping essay, Cohen enlists the biblical book of Joshua to illustrate certain hard truths about the requirements of Jewish survival and continuity. Among those requirements is the one taught by the figure of Joshua himself, the conqueror of Canaan—namely, having the power, when necessary, to wage and to win war.