We Decree

Evenly
Even on Fox News, anchors immersed in parsing the president’s speech — one said it was “a call to arms for the liberal agenda” ... (NYT, 1/21/2013)

Mr. Obama dispensed with the post-partisan appeals of four years ago to lay out a forceful vision of advancing gay rights, showing more tolerance toward illegal immigrants, preserving the social welfare safety net and acting to stop climate change. (NYT, 1/21/2013)

So according to the New York Times, those cretins over at Fox said Obama's speech was all about the Liberal agenda....which in a nearby article the Times then confirms. Got it.


The Wobbles
Article in the New York Times today on climate that we will quote extensively. To our recollection this is one of the few (only?) times that there has been an substantive discussion about historical weather patterns and events.

Scientists say it has been difficult to get people to understand or focus on the importance, for future generations, of today’s decisions about greenhouse gases. Their evidence that the gases represent a problem is based not just on computerized forecasts of the future, as is commonly believed, but on what they describe as a growing body of evidence about what occurred in the past.

Hmmm...greenhouse gases in the past! (our emphasis) Let's read on.

To add to that body of knowledge, Dr. Raymo is studying geologic history going back several million years. The earth has warmed up many times, for purely natural reasons, and those episodes often featured huge shifts of climate, partial collapse of the polar ice sheets and substantial increases in sea level...

Natural warming? Huge shifts? Collapse of polar ice sheets? Rise in sea levels? All occurring naturally? Now we are really intrigued!

Skeptics who play down the importance of global warming like to note that these past changes occurred with no human intervention. They argue that the climate is ever-changing, yet humans or their predecessors managed to prosper...

Yes, that is pretty much what we skeptics say.

The geologic record does offer startling examples of the instability of the planet. Whale bones can be dug up in the Sahara. The summit of Mount Everest is a chunk of ancient seafloor.

Whales in the desert...wow!

But most climate scientists reject the idea that this history means human-induced climate change will be benign. They add that the fossil record indicates nothing quite like today’s rapid release of greenhouse gases and its parallel effect of raising the planet’s temperature, changes that are occurring in a geologic instant.

“Absolutely, unequivocally, nature has changed before,” said Richard B. Alley, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. “But it looks like we’re going to do something bigger and faster than nature ever has.”

Oh, but this time it's different? Note the jump to "human-induced" change which is depicted as absolutely incontrovertible.

Scientists who study climate history, known as paleoclimatologists, focus much of their research on episodes when wobbles in the earth’s orbit caused it to cool down or warm up, causing sea level to rise or fall by hundreds of feet.

More interesting science. The earth wobbles which causing cooling and warming.

Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, appears to have played a crucial role. When changes in the orbit caused the earth to cool, scientists say, a large amount of carbon dioxide entered the ocean, reducing the heat-trapping properties of the atmosphere and thus amplifying the cooling. Conversely, when the shifts in sunlight led to initial warming, carbon dioxide emerged from the ocean and helped speed the end of the previous ice age.

Hold the phone sister! Do you mean to say that changes in the earth's orbit (the "wobbles") can actually change the level of greenhouse gases? This is stunning news. Why haven't we heard this before?

Based on this record, scientists like Dr. Alley describe carbon dioxide as the master control knob of the earth’s climate. A large body of scientific evidence shows that the current increase in the gas is being caused by human activity, meaning that people are essentially twisting the earth’s thermostat hard to the right.

Even after all of this great science validating natural weather changes we are back to blaming humans. Of course, there is also a large body of evidence published by scientists that refutes the "blame humans" hypothesis. Such scientists who are forced to write op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal in order to be heard.


Letters To O
What people do not realize is that the practice of children voluntarily writing the White House is so common that the Obama Administration is having difficulty keeping the content of some of these letters from the press. Fortunately, I have a mole in the White House who has sent me some of these previously hidden letters - all of which were mailed by school children to Obama. In fairness, we are forbidden to assume that any of the following letters were written under duress from right wing parents or school teachers:

Grant writes "Mr. Obama, there should be some changes in the law with abortions. It’s a free country, but I recommend there needs be [sic] a limit with killing babies. Please don’t let people own abortion clinics or give money to powerful lobbies like Planned Parenthood. I think there should be a good reason to get an abortion. There should be a limit about [sic] how many abortions a person can have." (Mike Adams, Townhall.com, 1/21/2013)

We are going to confer the label of "literary genius" on Mike Adams for this piece in which he imagines children writing letters to Obama (see Newtown) begging him to do something about abortion. 


Decision Time
“If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent,” Mickelson said. “So I’ve got to make some decisions on what to do.” (NYT, 1/20/2013)

So are Depardieu (France) and golfer Phil (California) wrong or selfish because they do not want to pay 75% or 63% of their earnings in taxes?