Mark Steyn:
“This is a brilliant piece. Kathy Shaidle should turn it into a book.”
I make unconvincing noises of protest here.

How long does a theory have to be dead, before the general public starts to smell the reek of it’s corpse:

A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic’s thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer’s fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.
A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA’s Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.
[…]
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

crossposted @ Celestial Junk

You thought it was all about OIL …
You thought it was the AFGHAN PIPELINE…
You thought it was the illusive WMD …
… or, even DEMOCRACY in the ME …
Courageous and tenacious journalism has uncovered the truth … it’s all about the SBs.

source.
cross-posted @ Celestial Junk

Let’s play “Spot the Scientist” … if you can!
Warning: Scary Music

And, in other news …
It takes an abject failure, or charlatan, to be at the center of a hoax not once but twice:

Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for . . . an ice age? An old Washington Post story indicates he did.
On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming.” It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man’s use of fossil fuels.
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in “the next 50 years” fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, “could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
Aiding Rasool’s research, the Post reported, was a “computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen,” who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.

When it comes to Hansen, following the money may explain a few things.
Yet More:
Let’s cheer for the Canadian …

Already topping the international agenda, the fight against global warming and activists such as Al Gore could take home this year’s Nobel Peace Prize when it is announced on Friday, observers say.
Gore, a former US vice-president, and another climate change campaigner, Canadian Inuit Sheila Watt-Cloutier, are believed to be among the favorites as the Nobel committee hunkers down to select a winner among the 181 candidates nominated for this year’s award.

Some Sense from an AGW Believer:

All eyes are on Greenland’s melting glaciers as alarm about global warming spreads. This year, delegations of U.S. and European politicians have made pilgrimages to the fastest-moving glacier at Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes.
Curiously, something that’s rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today. Or that melt rates around Ilulissat were faster in the early part of the past century, according to a new study. And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat — perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.

Speaking of Ice … Southern Ice Breaks Record for “Growing“:

Just as we set a new record in the northern hemisphere for minimum sea ice area in September, the southern hemisphere has officially set a new record for maximum sea ice area. According to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Polar Research Group the southern hemisphere sea ice area reached 16.17 million square kilometers, narrowly breaking the old record of 16.03 million square kilometers. The record data goes back to 1979.

… get a load of the two-step shuffle at the end of the article …
crossposted @ Celestial Junk

SDA readers get a hold of some topics, and like a pack of hungry terriers just don’t let go … I love it.
Here then, is more fodder for the discussions found HERE and HERE:

It’s a rare thing to see Canadian combat footage post 1950’s. So it is, that the following videos are rare indeed. Many of you have seen these before, as they’ve been out for a while, but I thought I’d post them anyway.
The first marks a watershed, capturing just how aggressive Canuck operations were last summer. Our guys rooted out an enemy who’d never been driven out of his home turf … not even by soviet offensives.
“There definitely going to wonder who the Canadians are from here on out … that’s for sure!”

Ambushed:

Engagement:

I’ve had 3 ribbons stolen from my vehicles so far … good thing about it is, it forces me to buy new ones, which means more donation to CF families.
And finally, a Canadian soldier who has passed on a unique legacy:

In Afghanistan, our men and women move among the indigenous people. Our soldiers know better than any of us the poverty that traps Afghans. One Canadian soldier used to write his parents about the poverty, and he requested assistance in aiding newborns … his request was simply that the home front supply caps for newborns. The knitted caps became known as Boomer Hats, named for the soldier who requested them.
That soldier was Corporal Andrew James Eykelenboom. He never made it home. He was killed by a suicide bomber.

Does anyone (besides liberal reporters looking to replace Jerry Falwell in their rolodex) really care about James Dobson’s opinions?

The Sask Party demands that CUPE refrain from doing their masters bidding.

“No one is disputing the right of unions or other agencies to speak
out and make their views known to the electorate — that’s part of our
democratic process,” McMorris said. “But, for a union to distribute
this pack of lies in a deliberate attempt to scare vulnerable people
truly goes beyond what’s acceptable.” – Don McMorris

Sorry, Don, but that’s like asking salmon to pass on the run.

CUPE is, has been, and will be in the pocket of the NDP. They’re the trump card. Demanding they not lie about Sask Party intentions in seniors’ homes and hospitals is like asking the sun to not rise in the east.

Asking that people go and read the Sask Party policies and guidelines for themselves isn’t as easy as scaring people by having the union’s representative drop off propaganda.

Too bad.

Cheers,
lance

Dr. Tim Ball:

The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998 and a growing number of climate experts expect this trend to continue until at least 2030. This, happening while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise, is in complete contradiction to the theory of human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). The CBC and other die-hard AGW proponents respond by publicizing selected glacial melts and the impact of dramatic but improbable sea level rises, the only warming issues that seem to grab public attention.

Sir John:

A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change “mega disaster”, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned.
Sir John, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.

Richard Lindzen:

Lindzen doesn’t dispute that the planet has warmed up in the past three decades, but he argues that human-generated CO2 accounts for no more than 30 percent of this temperature rise. Much of the warming, he says, stems from fluctuations in temperature that have occurred for millions of years—explained by complicated natural changes in equilibrium between the oceans and the atmosphere—and the latest period of warming will not result in catastrophe.

Put your links in the comments …
To get you started:

Taoism: Shit happens.
Confucianism: Confucius say, “Shit happens.”
Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn’t really shit.
Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.
Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?
Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.
Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.
Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.
Presbyterian: This shit was bound to happen.
Episcopalian: It’s not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve the right wine with it.

Lots more shit …

Just got a tip that the Western Standard, Canada’s only conservative magazine, is closing its doors.
Can anyone confirm or, hopefully, deny?