Climategate

Here’s an excellent article about how the climate debate has been controlled from the beginning. There has been a relatively small group of scientists who control the publishing in peer-reviewed magazines such that only ‘approved’ papers were published.

There is also some pretty arrogant talk by the originators of the emails that claim that these ’scientists’ talk in a language that the rest of us are too stupid to understand, and it only sounds like they were rigging the results. That’s a bunch of hooey by arrogant academics, and crooked ones at that.

These people have lied to the world in order to create a movement based on global warming; and they are trying to cover it up. In the face of a cooling trend that has been recognized for years – by real scientists whose views have been suppressed or disparaged and dismissed out of hand.

Setting government policy based on lies is criminally stupid.

-Popgun

Global Warming is a Fraud!

The ’scientists’ have been fraudulently stroking the data to support the global warming hypothesis. In these emails they clearly admit that even they can not find true evidence for global warming. Here’s a link to the Fox News story. And here’s one to John Lott’s article. And here’s another John Lott article with a more detailed breakdown. The climatologists have been distorting the numbers for a very long time.

In point of fact, the last ten years has shown a decline in global temperatures. As mentioned in the emails, and noted elsewhere.

We need to put a stop to the Cap and Trade Bill – NOW. It is the most insane thing I can imagine to wreck our country financially for a stated purpose that does not exist!

Now that this is out in the open, just watch – the Obama and the Democrats will still try to push Cap & Trade through, anyway. If they succeed, it will really hurt this country economically (while lining Al Gore’s pockets), and turn even more of our economy over to control of the government. Which is the real purpose of the bill.

Ask your Senators – what is the Cap and Trade bill for, if global warming is not a risk? And tell them NOT to vote for it.

-Popgun

Magnitude of the National Debt, #2

Back in May, I noted that the the U.S. national debt equaled about $2.25 per day since the creation of the universe / big-bang event. ALL previous administrations combined have saddled us with this amount of debt.

The Obama administration has announced that the 10-year deficit projection (NEW debt) is 9 trillion dollars.

That means that the U.S. National debt today will increase by about $1.79 on Obama’s watch.

All prior administrations combined = $2.25. Obama’s administration alone = $1.79.

If this prediction is correct, the U.S. National debt in 2019 will be an amazing $4.04 for every day since the creation of the universe.

Wow.

-Popgun

Drill Baby Drill!

Sarah Palin says it very well!

Obama is sending more than $2 billion dollars to Brazil so their government oil company Petrobras can drill off shore. Why? Why help them when we need the business?

That is a great many good-paying jobs that could be ours, right here in the U.S.

We have the oil and gas reserves to completely remove our dependence on foreign oil – if our government will authorize us to go get it. This has been blocked by left-leaning democrats and environmentalist lobbies. It is time to stop this nonsense, and do the logical thing.

The fundamental thing the environmentalists need to understand is this: we are going to burn the same amount of oil, whether we get it here or from some foreign government. There is NO difference in environmental impact from drilling here in the U.S., and offshore as opposed to buying oil from overseas.

Drilling here and now has the following benefits:

• Immediately and near-term open up many thousands or even millions of well-paid jobs in the U.S.
• Needs NO new technology, unlike the green energy projects that Obama and the democrats want. This means that MORE jobs come open SOONER.
• In the near future, would dramatically reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. This reduces or eliminates a lever used by those foreign governments to influence U.S. foreign policy. As an analogy – if someone else controls your food supply – they own you. That is the situation we are in now – by our own choice!
• It would eliminate an outflow of some number between $400 billion and $700 billion which now leaves this country every year for the purchase of oil.
• It would be a big step towards stopping the present economic slide. That many billions of dollars kept in our economy might even be enough to pull us completely out of the recession.

What is stopping us from doing this?

Intense lobbying by environmental groups and left-wing activists which influence politicians of all stripes. What happened to Obama’s promise to eliminate all that lobbying influence??

Especially since we now know that there is no good evidence that global warming is even happening; noting that for more than ten years, the earth’s average temperature has been cooling! Predicating national policy on bogus science, for the benefit of a few people like Al Gore, who is getting rich off of it, is ludicrous.

It is time that we put a stop to this nonsense.

Drill Here – Drill Now!

Exit strategy: While we drill here, drill now – we also need to implement a program to identify and make economically viable alternate energy technologies. We can afford to take our time and do this right, rather than trying to enforce an economically ruinous switch to technologies that are not mature, which is what the present administration would like us to do. In the future we really will run out of oil – and we need to be prepared for that day. But we do have time to plan it and do it in a way that doesn’t destroy us economically.

-Popgun

Orange

“Is the color orange that you see the same as the color orange I see?”

This is a deeper question than you might think. I mean, here we are, both looking at the same orange object. My brain interprets what my eyes send it, and yours does the same. We both agree the object is orange.

But is what you experience the same as what I experience, as we both view this object?

Maybe what I experience is what you would think of as a different color – but since we both agree it is orange, that’s what we call it – because we’ve been taught that this particular color is orange.

Frankly, there’s no way to know. Humans are forever separated by this divide – that one person cannot directly experience what another experiences.

Oddly enough, I do have empirical evidence that what you see is, indeed, probably not what I see, even though we agree it is orange.

When I had my lens replacements due to cataract surgery, the surgery on my left eye was done the month before the surgery on my right eye. During that month, I could look at any object, and depending on which eye I had open, I would see it in different colors. For years I had thought I worked in an office with dingy yellow walls; turns out they are a nice off-white color. I think.

There’s a lesson here somewhere. We need to remember that two people can be side-by-side, go through the same experience together, and still have different experiences.

Something to think about.

-Popgun

Fish Tank

I just added water to the fish tank in my office. I think I heard one of the fish cosmologists talking to another fish about how the universe is clearly expanding, at the speed of current.

-Popgun

Electric Cars

Here’s an article on Hot Air that posits that electric cars will not reduce pollution. Instead, it will simply cause the pollution to be produced somewhere other than by the car.

They’re right, of course. However, I don’t think this is a bad thing. Think about the complexity and costs associated with this: Every car on the highway must have anti-pollution equipment which must be paid for and maintained – or, we have simpler, cheaper electric cars, and put in whatever it takes at the power plants to contain pollution.

It looks to me like doing the pollution control at the power plant would have several advantages: lower overall cost; central location for maintenance; probably higher efficiency. Also, higher reliability of the vehicles (less to go wrong).

-Popgun

An Interesting Statistical Study

Popgun’s World was recently one of the subjects of a study done by a college student up in the northeast, and it was pretty interesting. For convenience, I’ll refer to this student as M.

The goal was to find out whether it is possible to positively identify an anonymous blogger by use of inadvertent hints dropped by the blogger in his blog entries. M was very polite, and secured my permission before beginning, as I secured his permission before writing this entry.

I’m not going to enumerate the clues he found on my pages. If you want to figure out who I am, you’ll have to be just as smart and diligent as he is.

M was able to deduce:

• The town and zip code of my mailing address.
• My gender.
• My exact age and birthdate.
• The fact that I live in a single family dwelling.
• Probably some other things as well.

Then, M used a direct marketing tool to generate a list of people that match these criteria – there were 66 people in the list. At this point, he stopped short of actually identifying me because he would have had to pay a fee to get the actual list. M tells me that statistically, there is an 83.7% chance that only one person on that list was born on my birthdate.

So some of the facts are corroboration, whereas the key facts were my birthdate and my zip code.

The implication of this study is this; if the government (or anybody with a motivation) wants to know who you are, starting with your blog, they can probably find out without much difficulty.

Truthfully, I had always considered that this was possible by one means or another – probably by more direct means. If you want to protect yourself against being identified by this particular method, you just have to be careful about the clues you leave as you write. For instance, I might have caused misdirection merely by stating a different city; this might not be enough to stop the probe, but it certainly would have slowed it down.

I’m still thinking about what this means to me. I’m not especially worried about being identified; I don’t have anything to hide. My opinions and observations are protected by the First Amendment. But I do value my privacy. I will certainly be more careful about leaving these sorts of clues in the future.

-Popgun

Quote of the Day..

“No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.” – John Galt, “Atlas Shrugged”, Ayn Rand.

This is so inherently, obviously, true that it continuously surprises me that so many, many people clearly don’t grasp it. Examples of this might include:

• The silly idea that taking away honest, law-abiding people’s guns will make them, and other people, safer.
• The present administration’s insistence, ignoring all evidence and history, that spending trillions of dollars that do not yet exist will somehow bring about prosperity and economic growth.
• Basing major-impact government policy on a hypothesis (global warming) about which substantial doubt exists within the scientific community.
• The ability of many religious fundamentalists to ignore the massive body of scientific knowledge that demonstrates without reasonable doubt the age of the earth, for instance.
• And many, many others.

First, what are the facts?

Second, how do they fit with what I already (think I) know?

Third, reconciliation of apparent contradictions.

Believe it or not, this requires a voluntary effort – it is not automatic. Many people never learn to do this. This skill is fundamental to any sort of critical thinking.

When the percentage of people who understand and practice critical thinking becomes too small, our civilization will fall. This is the main thesis of Atlas Shrugged, a very thought-provoking book.

It’s too soon to be sure, but we may be seeing this in action.

-Popgun

The Biggest Hoax of All Time

The biggest hoax of all time is being perpetrated. That is the global warming myth, upon which our illustrious government is basing their economic policies.

Some real, live scientists debunk it. Truly good graphs of what the climate is actually doing. Go here to read about it.

-Popgun