Very good news:

A flying Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with a massive laser gun shot down a Scud-like missile over the Pacific late Thursday night, marking what analysts said was a major milestone in the development of the nation’s missile defense system.

The test shoot-down at 8:44 p.m. over a military test range near Point Mugu is expected to renew debate over spending billions of dollars for a system that seemed so far behind schedule that the Pentagon decided to significantly curtail its budget last year. The test, which the Pentagon described as a success, could be a major boon to Southern California, where much of the high-tech system has been developed and tested.

“Proving this technology is game-changing,” said Loren Thompson, a military policy analyst for the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. “The program’s funding has been hanging on by a thread. A successful shoot-down of a ballistic missile will demonstrate to Capitol Hill that the airborne laser has potential.”

To translate from the MSM-ese: Obama and his liberals are gleefully gutting SDI because they are just plain and simple ignorant about it. They think in terms of the leftist slanders of “Ronald RayGun” from the 1980’s rather than in reality. Meanwhile, we desperately need this program in an increasingly dangerous world and smart people at Defense know this.

So, we get this successful test in an election year and the hope is that some Democrats – desperate to save their political hides – will vote for funding of SDI and that Obama will just sign it because its easier than opposing it. The United States gets defended by happy accident of Democrats wanting to get re-elected. Its a sad way to conduct affairs, but as long as Democrats are in charge, we’ll have to use such tricks to get anything worthwhile done.

Hmmm…

The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.

Anyone get a comment from Al Gore?

The doom and gloom headline goes:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent is Third Lowest on Record

Wow! Third lowest! Incredible! But, wait…

Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent around September 12… According to scientists affiliated with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), sea ice coverage dropped to 5.10 million square kilometers (1.97 million square miles) at its minimum. The ice cover was 970,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) greater than the record low of 2007 and 580,000 square kilometers (220,000 square miles) greater than 2008…

…The four lowest ice extents on record have occurred between 2005 and 2009, with the record minimum reached during a dramatic drop in ice cover in 2007 that was exacerbated by unusual polar winds.

So, the ice cover hit nadir in 2007 and has increased substantially in 2008 and 2009 – and the worst year was partially caused by unusual winds. Anyone sense a trend here? Now, if you go in to the story you’ll see that the claim is that ice cover is 34% lower than it was 30 years ago…but, then again, we were in a warming trend during that time and it does make a bit of sense that ice would recede…meanwhile, for the past decade we’ve been in a cooling trend, and now we see the ice sheet expanding, again. Anyone want to bet me that in 15 years or so it will be back where it was 30 years ago?

Meanwhile, the zealots are still at it, asserting that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years(the article has a picture of people sun bathing in the Arctic…so that you liberals out there can understand)…nice of them to put it out that far, long after a presumptive passing of “cap and trade” and other screwball enviro-fascist bills…

From the BBC, of all places:

…For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming…

…Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject…

…So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Seems that denying anthropogenic global warming isn’t the province of kooks on par with Holocaust deniers, after all. Any of you AGW zealots want to apologize?

To me, its pretty clear that the AGW theory was a hoax – not just a mistaken theory, but a slapped together set of false premises backed up by twisted data designed to force a course of action which otherwise would not have been followed. The people who propagated it should be charged with fraud – and forced to pay back all the money we’ve wasted on it. Of course, I could be wrong – if temps rise very fast over the next five years, then there might be something to AGW…but I’m not at all concerned that I’ll be proved wrong. All the science – hard science based on observed data rather than hocus-pocus climate models – indicates a period of cooling.

The lesson here is that we can’t trust anything asserted by anyone left of center – for two decades now they have been attempting to force us to modify our entire way of life based upon a fraud…and something which has been demonstrably a fraud for about five years now, and which was clearly questionable within a few years of it being advanced. This is the MO of the left – lie, lie and then lie some more. Whatever it takes to win – its all good, to the left, because they are trying to remake the world in to a better place, and if a few lies have to be told, the left is ok with it.

Time for some truth – time to end this Age of Lies.

This does explain a lot:

…the Pill may also have changed women’s taste in men, according to a study.

Scientists say the hormones in the oral contraceptive suppress a woman’s interest in masculine men and make boyish men more attractive. Although the change occurs for just a few days each month, it may have been highly influential since use of the Pill began more than 40 years ago.

If the theory is right, it could partly explain the shifting in tastes from macho 1950s and 1960s stars such as Kirk Douglas and Sean Connery to the more wimpy, androgynous stars of today, such as Johnny Depp and Russell Brand.

Dr Alexandra Alvergne, of the University of Sheffield, says the Pill could also be altering the way women pick their mates and could have long-term implications for society.

‘There are many obvious benefits of the Pill for women, but there is also the possibility that the Pill has psychological side-effects that we are only just discovering,’ she said. ‘We need further studies to find out what these are.’

The links between the Pill and sexual preferences are highlighted in a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Scientists have long known that a woman’s taste in men changes over her menstrual cycle.

During the few days each month when women are fertile – around the time of ovulation – they tend to prefer masculine features and men who are more assertive.

On days when women are not fertile, their tastes swing towards more feminine, boyish faces and more caring personalities, researchers have shown.

However, if women are taking the Pill they no longer have fertile days.

On the plus side, since women who take the pill tend towards a more liberal world view, what we’re getting is liberal women ever more attracted to wimpier men, who are thus less likely to get a woman pregnant during those times when Mr and Mrs Liberal decide to have their one, designer baby. Liberals could be breeding themselves out.

Hmmm…

Some Idaho school kids enjoy an early snow day

Just one week ago, we were bracing for a “cool down” from the 80s to the 60s.

Now, it’s getting downright wintry. And in some parts of our viewing area, snow is piling up.

This may be one for the record books, not only how early this heavy fall snowstorm is, but the fact that it appears to have created the earliest snow day in the history of the Blaine County School District.

“We got dumped on last night, you can see that by looking around here. We weren’t quite ready for it. It did cause us some issues in the school district,” Lonnie Barber, Blaine County Superintendent.

Good thing the global warming zealots changed the rules and decided that no matter what happens, it proves global warming is happening…otherwise, the increasing number of stories like this might be difficult to explain away.

The cowardly continue their search for the Fountain of Youth:

Who would have thought it? The quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School.

At a conference on aging held here last week, the medical school’s dean, Jeffrey Flier, was to be seen greeting participants who ranged from members of the 120 club (they intend to live at least that long) to devotees of very low calorie diets…

…“In five or six or seven years,” said Christoph Westphal, Sirtris’s other co-founder, “there will be drugs that prolong longevity.”

But neither Dr. Sinclair nor Dr. Westphal was the most optimistic person at the conference. That status belonged to the English gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who sports a beard so luxuriant that it is hard to see if he is wearing a tie. His goal is “negligible senescence.”

Some attendees were so convinced of the virtues of less food that they have begun severe diets of various kinds. Cynthia Kenyon, of the University of California, San Francisco, said she had gone on a low-carb diet in 2002 after finding that food with even 2 percent sugar reduced the lifespan of the laboratory roundworms she studies. “Basically I try to steer clear of desserts and starches, though I do eat chocolate,” she said.

Her willowy figure makes her look at least a decade younger than her age. But a practitioner of more severe caloric restriction who was at the conference looked gaunt and a little frail.

Eat right, exercise, die anyway. Go for it – get a 1,000 year life span, if you like…what are you going to do with it? Just live and live and live…but to what purpose? Even the smartest scientist, I think, won’t get you a billion years of life…and even if he did, you’d still die because the universe, as it is, is doomed. Believe in God or believe in pure materialism, this world is gonna die. Now, believers hold that a new world will replace it – the life of the world to come. And the cost of living for ages? Being very boring – have to watch what you eat with great care, exercise with great diligence, avoid all risks…in short, live by not living.

No, thanks; I’ll keep my three score year and ten; four score if I’m a strong man. That is plenty enough for me on this world. One of my regrets in this life is that I didn’t manage to get my dad that last scotch he wanted…and one of the last things he said to me was, “I’m ready to go home”. He drained the cup of this life to the last drop, and then was ready to let it go – as a believer, of course, I hold that he’s quite a lot better off than I am now…but even if he wasn’t a believer, what would be the point of clinging to life here on earth? No matter what you do, your life here will never be that perfection you want…why stay for ages in a place you can never be fully happy with? Believe or don’t believe – its still better to exit after a reasonable amount of time.

I see a future – supposing Our Lord doesn’t return for some centuries, yet – where normal people will live to be, say, 100 (given the more common advances in health care) while a select group of doubters will fretfully cling on to life at great cost and great pain, just because they can’t bear the thought of not being here tomorrow…that they might have to go away from here, and not matter any longer on this earth.

Perhaps because the sun is getting less frisky:

Researchers in the US may have discovered further evidence that the Sun is heading towards an extended period of quiet activity, the like of which has not been seen since the 17th century. The impact this may have on climate is poorly understood but it would be good news for satellite communications, which would continue to avoid the harsher impacts of space weather.

Mostly ignored in the whole global warming debate is that large, hot, yellow thing which hangs in the sky from dawn until dusk. Global warming enthusiasts have launched a host of reasons for rising global temperatures, and even more excuses for why temperatures have been flat or declining for about ten years now – and all these discussions have ignored the sun. Well, the sun is checking in – and after a period of high activity, we’ve been heading in to a period of low activity. Amazing the way that works, huh?

I’ve noted over at NRO’s The Corner that a new phrase has entered the global warming lexicon – “climate stability”, this being coupled with talk of how global warming will have different effects on different parts of the world. In other words, “the weather will be different, but we global warming people will pick and choose out of the daily weather whatever we believe buttresses our case…and anyone who picks out contrary bits of weather will be told that they don’t know the difference between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’”.

UPDATE: Beware of the Branch Carbonians!

UPDATE II: Are the global warming advocates hiding the climate data?

Snow on Labor Day:

A dusting of snow fell on Mt. Bachelor’s mid-mountain Labor Day weekend, marking the beginning of a snow season that resort officials said should kick off skiing by the week of Thanksgiving.

Never knew the snow season began in Summer…

And the countdown…5….4….3….2….1….

Repairing Same-Sex Attraction

Experts Question APA Report

Mental-health professionals should avoid telling same-sex-attracted clients that therapy can change their sexual orientation, the American Psychological Association advises.

The organization, which represents 150,000 psychologists nationwide, also issued a report during its annual meeting in early August saying the latest research on “change” or “reparative” therapy was inconclusive and therefore the APA could not recommend it.

No therapist should “promise outcomes they can’t deliver,” Judith Glassgold, the task force’s chairwoman, said. “We were concerned clients were being misled by promises of change. We don’t want clients’ expectations to be so high that they can’t reach their goals.”…

…According to the APA, the one thing recent research does show is that “sexual orientation identity” — versus sexual orientation — can “shift and evolve in some individuals’ lives.”

“Sexual orientation is underlying attractions and desires. You can’t choose who you fall in love with,” Glassgold said. “Sexual orientation identity — who you identify with publicly and in groups — can be controlled.”

NARTH disagrees that change is limited: “Some people can and do change, not just in terms of behavior and identity, but in core features of sexual orientation such as fantasy and attractions,” according to a press release.

Angelo S., a spokesman for Courage, agreed change in both sexual orientation and identity is possible. He cited programs such as “Journey into Manhood” retreats that have “helped men reduce feelings so that they’re not in the homosexual lifestyle anymore. Some say they don’t experience same-sex attraction at all anymore,” he said.

Persons with same-sex attraction are invited to unite “whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s cross,” according to “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” a 1986 pastoral letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In the letter, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pointed out that “homosexual activity prevents one’s own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God.”

I believe the Courage people are on the right track here. We are human beings – we are not slaves to the flesh unless we choose to be so. Just as some men – with the normal inclination towards attraction to females – can eschew sex completely so other men can choose to change from attraction to men to attraction to women. There are plenty of men out there who will testify that they were once completely gay in attraction and lifestyle and are now completely straight – attempts to shove this under the rug, as the APA does with this recent report, doesn’t change the facts.

We Catholics hold that those with a deep-seated attraction to the same sex are not negligible in number and must be treated with respect and love – but because we are to tolerate doesn’t mean we are to support. Just because some gay people have chosen to do what they do it does not follow that we have to congratulate them on it, nor pretend there’s no way for them to change their mind, and their lives, at a later point.

If we are to be genuinely reasonable, we must keep our mind open to the full truth. Homosexuality, as a field of scientific study, is fairly new, and our knowledge of psychology is still limited, even under the best of circumstances. It is absurd to say there is no way to alter one’s way of living – there may, indeed, be ways whereby gay men and women can decide to change. If one does in any way believe that human beings should have a choice, then the only way to go with this is with a willingness to discard propaganda points and see what is really out there. No one is going to force gays in to religion camps where they are to be brainwashed in to being straight – but if going from gay to straight can be done (and it looks as though it can) then gay people have a right to know the facts about it.

Posted without additional comment:

Chicago Sees Coldest July In 67 Years
Average Temperature Only 68.9 Degrees

This is a book I’m looking forward to reading:

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality.

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”.

I’m one of those deniers – I’ll state it again, just to be clear: Anthropogenic Global Warming is a hoax. The world got warmer, but we had nothing to do with it. Now its getting cooler (and I love the way global warming enthusiasts are insisting that the recent cooling trend doesn’t prove that global warming is ending…its like saying that the lack of water coming down from the sky doesn’t prove that its stopped raining) and we have nothing to do with that, either.

One of the good things about the global recession is that these green initiatives are foundering on the fact that people facing foreclosure and job losses are increasingly un-awed by the latest pronouncement of the Goron or His Highness, the Prince of Wales, that we’ve only got a little time left before we all die. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than bogus stories of breathing causing the world to die.

From the Goron’s home town:

Cool weather has broken a previous low temperature for July 21 in Nashville that was set when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

When the temperature at the National Weather Service station dipped to 58 degrees at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, it wiped out the previous record low for the date of 60 degrees, which was set in 1877.

NWS forecaster Bobby Boyd noted it was the third consecutive morning when Nashville either tied or broke a daily low temperature record.

Temperatures were cool, but did not break records at several Tennessee cities.

Knoxville dropped to 59 degrees Tuesday morning, Chattanooga had 60 degrees, Tri-Cities recorded 58 degrees and Memphis was 69 degrees.

And, by the way, it seems that it was that big, yellow thingy in the sky which caused temperatures to rise…imagine that? I know, who woulda thunk it? Now it looks that the glowing, hot round whatchamacallit is going in to a period of lower activity, and thus we’ll have lower temperatures. I wish that Super Scientist Al Gore would get on this and figure out what we can do to fix this problem.

Here on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, it is appropriate that some people are debating the pros and cons of the space program.

My view is that space exploration does offer us great opportunities to expand our knowledge and to develope new technologies – on the other hand, its rather a burden which we seem to have to keep up on lest some nation over take us in space power. The “space race” of the 60’s was to get to the Moon before the Russians did; now its a race to get back to the Moon before the Chinese do. And then on to various near Earth asteroids and then Mars and beyond. I used to be a lot more enthused about this than I am now – I do wish we could just leave it to private enterprise to do whatever it wishes with space, if there’s any market for it at all. But such is not to be.

If we are to do it, then we should do it “all in”. Whatever the cost is, we should carefully plan it out so that NASA can know with precision not just what it will have in 2010, but in 2020 and 2050. Missions to the Moon, Mars and further out aren’t just planned on a note book with a pencil. They take a great deal of time and a massive amount of preparation. Give NASA a budget and then tell them to get us there, where ever “there” turns out to be.

What do you think?

I done told and I done told you:

Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.

Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.

“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.

Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.

Going forward, CEI has called upon the EPA to independently analyze the science and to become more transparent in its own reporting.

We can see why this was suppressed – the vote yesterday in the House would have swung overwhelmingly against if an official report came out last week or so showing that the whole concept of anthropogenic global warming is invalid. Al Gore is wrong, liberals – I know, I know; its hard to believe that a hack politician with no science training at all could be wrong on something like global warming, but there it is. I’m sure that Al Gore will get right on it and revise his “consensus”.

It is full steam ahead into liberal-land, boys and girls…and the fact that none of the problems liberalism proposes to fix actually exist doesn’t penetrate the liberal mind. They’re going to fix it, anyway. We’ll be many years undoing the damage Obama and his Democrats are creating.

Remember how the deformed frogs were proof of mankind’s devastation of the environment? Well, not quite:

Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs’ legs.

Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution.

However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause.

The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles.

There has never, not even once, been a case of an environmentalist alarm proven correct over time. Its all just a bunch of lies which, unfortunately, has that kernel of truth that polluting is a bad thing – extrapolating from that, environmentalists have cooked up one blatant lie after another…and now we’re set to enshrine the biggest of the environmentalist Big Lies into law via Obama’s “soak the poor” energy tax…a device designed for no other purpose than to get average Americans out of their cars, turning off their air conditioners and becoming the helpless, little proles the Powerful wish us to be.

Well, we’re on to them – the Tea Party movement shows that the people are awakening from their slumber…for the moment, they have the power, but only for the moment.

And if it passes, GOP House prospects will immeasurably brighten for 2010:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote Friday on a sprawling climate-change bill, signaling the Democratic leadership’s confidence that it can overcome objections from Farm Belt Democrats.

Opponents and supporters of landmark climate legislation are ramping up their public-relations campaigns ahead of the planned vote. The Obama administration is pushing the measure as a job-creator, while critics, including many Republicans, are portraying the bill as an energy tax that could slow the economy.

Any GOPer who says it will “slow” the economy needs a stern talking to – this is an economy killer; might as well decree that we’re going to spend trillions of dollars to make ourselves rich…oh, criminy, we’ve already done that. Guess this bill makes sense in light of that…outside of Liberal Land, however, this is insane.

Go for it, Donks; we want very much for you to commit political suicide, and this will do the trick very nicely.

Since you guys have been saying for 26 years that SDI wouldn’t work and your own guy, Obama, campaign against SDI…why is Obama deploying SDI around Hawaii under threat of a NK missile launch? Shouldn’t he just say “there’s nothing we can do to stop it because – as I stated in my campaign – SDI doesn’t work…but, don’t worry, if NK does nuke Hawaii, we’ll nuke them to heck and gone because the way to ensure nuclear peace is via mutual assured destruction”?

Come now, liberals, what have you to say?

What a shocker – environmentalists are lying…for the zillionth time…about global warming:

The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. Dr. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, asks:

[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?

You can check out Dr. Pielke’s blog for a detailed rebuttal of how the report presents science in his area of expertise, the study of trends in natural disasters and their relation to climate change. While the new federal report (prepared by 13 agencies and the White House) paints a dire picture of climate change’s impacts, Dr. Pielke says that the authors of this new report, like those of previous reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Stern Review, cherrypick weak evidence that fits their own policy preferences.

Now, before you liberals start calling Dr. Pielke a paid shill for Big Oil, his credentials:

I am a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I also have appointments as an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at Oxford University’s Said Business School and as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. Since 2008 I have also been a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute, a progressive think tank.

It is only by cherrypicking weak evidence and suppressing contrary evidence that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) can be built up into a large enough threat to call for massive changes in society. Given that the goal is massive changes, there is no chance that the advocates of AGW will ever do other than lie about what is going on. We have much to do and limited time and resources to do it – we’ve been wasting a great deal of time and resources on environmentalist whacko distortions, and its time we gave it a rest.

Because rigid adherence to out-of-date leftist talking points (and this one dates from 1983) trumps the safety and liberty of the American people:

Perhaps no part of the Obama administration’s planned Defense Department budget makes less sense than its effort to slash $1.2B from missile defense programs for FY 2010.

In light of the recent behavior of North Korea and the reminder that we face the prospect of a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic state in Iran, a group of Republican congressmen on the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday offered a series of amendments seeking to reverse the proposed cuts.

Sources on the Committee tell Pajamas Media that the Committee Democrats blocked the amendments — seemingly unaware that earlier in the day Obama had deemed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to be a “grave threat” or that administration officials were reporting that North Korea could have an ICBM capable of reaching the U.S. west coast within five years. Minority Whip Eric Cantor told Pajamas Media: “As we watch what is going on with North Korea and the brutal regime in Iran, Democrat efforts to cut missile defense programs are not only misguided, but dangerous. As our enemies ramp up, it makes no sense to cut important defense and national security programs.”

This is complete madness – in leftist ideology, it was pronounced in 1983 (at the behest of Soviet propagandists and fellow travelers) that SDI would never work. In spite of the fact that the USSR was building as much SDI as they could; in spite of the fact that scientific theory showed a wide array of SDI options; in spite of the fact that technological developments over the past quarter century have only confirmed the validity of SDI; in spite of the fact that we’re dealing ever more with mad men possessed of nuclear weapons – in spite of all this, the left was never instructed to drop opposition to SDI. Obama, being the figurehead of leftism in America, was instructed to parrot opposition to SDI while Congressional Democrats, also under such instructions, just waited for the chance to have a President who would go along with cuts in SDI. And here we are.

I do wonder how anyone could ever be in opposition to anything which might prevent a nuclear weapon from reaching our territory – heck, if it cost $10 trillion and only stopped one nuke, it’d be worth it. Of course, it won’t cost that much and it will stop far more than one…in the end, it might stop them all and make nuclear weapons, as Reagan desired, obsolete. Certainly this is a worthwhile task to turn ourselves to…but nothing doing on the left; SDI was just Ronald “Raygun” trying to start a nuclear war (work with me here, I’m dealing with leftist thought – which really did state that a method to defend against nuclear weapons was actually a means of using nuclear weapons) and thus it had to be stopped (that stopping it would prevent the bankruptcy of the USSR just never made it through the fog of leftist “thought”…and that USSR is bankrupt and defunct in large measure because of SDI still doesn’t get through their thick skulls…that the opposition to SDI is now lead on the global stage by those very Powers which would become trivial on the world stage once we deploy a full SDI system also never seems to get past the “wall of separation” between reality and leftist). In the end, we’re dealing with people who are willing to be extraordinarily stupid in service of leftist goals – and the real trouble is that they have the power to stop SDI…