Well, its been a while. A whole slew of recent submissions – mostly on global warming – have not appeared in any of the publications. So kudos to NST for their printing this, and here’s hoping they’re old global warming skepticism can resurface, particularly in the wake of 11 years of cooling and Climategate.

(UPDATE: It seems that NST did print my letter on Climategate in its hardcopy version. I shall have to track it down.)

From NST Letters 7 Dec 2009 (NST links become defunct after a certain period):

EFFIGY-BURNING: When it’s okay for some but not others
2009/12/07
SCOTT THONG YU YUEN, Ipoh

RECENTLY, the issue of intentionally showing disrespect to images of people has been in the limelight.

Some people have been stepping on photographs of politicians, while others have been burning effigies of ministers. In response to this, various individuals and groups have denounced such acts as “not Malaysian culture”.

And on the issue of our culture, a short while back mass street protests were also denounced as “not Malaysian culture”.

It seemed pretty acceptable a few years back when thousands of Malaysians from various political parties and non-governmental organisations gathered in mass street protests and burnt effigies of former United States president George W. Bush, former British prime minister Tony Blair and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.

There were no objections from anyone back then.

But I guess “Malaysian culture” can be redefined on a daily or case-by-case basis. Constant evolution is an aspect of culture, is it not?

A few differences from my original:

In response to this, various individuals and groups have denounced such acts as ‘not Malaysian culture’.

And on the issue of our culture, a short while back mass street protests were also denounced as ‘not Malaysian culture.’

Funny… It seemed pretty acceptable a few years back when thousands of Malaysians from various political parties and NGOs gathered in mass street protests and burnt effigies of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Ehud Olmert. There was nary a peep of objection from our leaders and betters back then.

Perhaps that line about street protests touched too close, as it has been UMNO personalities who have been calling it ‘not Malaysian culture’ in response to various Opposition and NGO protests.

Remember:

Above is Poster #3 from Malaysian Politics Motivational Posters

Related to this:

• Burning Photos and Effigies of Politicians is Not Asian Culture – has links to the Bush, Blair and Olmert cases.

• Dr M Hypocritical and Ignorant of Historical Malaysian Street Demo Culture

• Najib Tun Razak Says Street Demonstrations Such As Bersih Rally Not Part of Malaysian Culture, Conveniently Forgets Malayan Union Protests

• Penang: Massive Illegal UMNO Street Mob Protests Anti-NEP

• Civil Servants in Street Demos Will Be Sacke

An excellent, clear and concise piece that explains much of the actual current situation with research and conclusions on ‘climate change’. Related to what ‘climate scientists’ have been scamming in Climategate.

————————————

Excerpts from
The Wall Street Journal: The Climate Science Isn’t Settled
By Richard S. Lindzen

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn’t reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.

The notion that the earth’s climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth’s climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today’s. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the “Early Faint Sun Paradox.”

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of “bait and switch” scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.

The Democratic Party gives us this:

And RMartin of California gives the Donkey Party these in return (click for larger):

But really, serious credit must also go to President Obama for the latter two!

Michelle Malkin is calling all Photoshoppers and graphic editors to send in their submissions.

From The Star 3 Dec 2009:

Two managers killed in payroll grab

NUSAJAYA: Two senior managers of a construction firm were shot dead during a payroll heist.

They have been identified as managing director Saravanam, 39 and his manager Viswa, 43.

Nusajaya OCPD Supt Abdul Aziz Ahmad said police believed the victims were on their way to pay the salaries of workers when a car overtook their four-wheel drive and forced them off the road.

One of the robbers pulled Saravanam out of the vehicle while a gunman shot Viswa, who was driving, in the head.

Police suspect four robbers had pulled off the job. “The victims were shot at close range,” he said, adding that the men escaped with two bags containing money.

It is learnt that the robbers drove to Lima Kedai in Gelang Patah and torched their car before escaping in another vehicle.

Police recovered five spent casings at the scene.

Usual modus operandi for JB criminals who harm/kill first, then rob you while you are stunned/dead – or hurt you just to prove that they’re JB criminals (examples one, two, three, four, five, six).

And update from The Star 3 Dec 2009:

Police detain woman over Nusajaya payroll grab

JOHOR BARU: Johor police have detained a woman in connection with the murder on Wednesday of a contractor and manager of a construction firm at Jalan Tebing Runtuh during a robbery here.

Johor police chief Datuk Mohd Mokhtar Mohd Shariff said the woman, aged 22, was detained in Nusajaya on Wednesday night.

“With the arrest of the woman, we believe the case can be solved soon. The public who have any information on the murder, can contact the police,” he told reporters after attending an auxiliary police seminar here on Thursday.

During the 3.30pm robbery on Wednesday, 39-year-old contractor Saravanam and 43-year-old Viswa, who was a manager in a road building firm in Nusajaya, were shot dead by assailants while the victims were on their way to the construction site after withdrawing money from a bank, believed to be for the salary of workers.

The incident happened when the Mitsubishi Pajero four-wheel drive that was driven by the victims was intercepted by two suspects in another car. The assailants then walked up to the two men and shot them from close range before escaping with the money.

The assailants later set their escape car on fire at Lima Kedai, about 5km from the scene before driving away in another car driven by another accomplice. – Bernama

Another arrest noted here.

I mean, seriously people…

Which of the below do you think really gives Islam a bad name and makes nonMuslims think it is a religion of violence, deathness and hatefestivities?

and

————OR————

and

???????????

Answer that, and then focus your debating/persuading (and bashing, insults and trolling) that ‘Islam = peace’ in that direction.

(Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy smacking you trolls around.)

See also related arguments.

From The Star 2 Dec 2009:

MPs: Stepping on photos of people not Asian culture

KUALA LUMPUR: Members of Parliament from PKR have turned on their Pakatan Rakyat partners DAP, condemning their act of stepping on photographs of politicians. They also hit out at the act of burning photographs of politicians.

“This is not what Asian culture is all about. For the Malays, even when you touch someone’s head, it is considered rude, what more stepping on pictures of their faces,” said Bayan Baru MP Datuk Zahrain Mohd Hashim.

On Sunday, the Perak DAP an­­nual convention in Ipoh saw its members walking over a large poster of three elected representatives which was laid like a big doormat at the entrance of a hall.

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, however, avoided stepping on the poster which featured the images of former party comrade Hee Yit Foong; and former PKR members Mohd Osman Jailu and Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi.

On Monday, a poster of Lim was stepped on and burned during a demonstration by Penang Barisan Nasional Youth in George Town.

At the Parliament lobby yesterday, nine MPs from PKR including Zahrain held a press conference to condemn the behaviour.

“This is also a bad influence on the younger generation,’’ said Zah­rain, adding that the such and act was childish, uncivilised and reflected ill-breeding.

Tell that to these guys:

• Malaysian Muslims burn Bush effigy during protest against prophet cartoons – About 3,000 Muslims burned an effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush and called for an international boycott of Danish products Friday to protest the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, officials said.

• Gaza Under Siege: Malaysia condemns Israeli atrocities – The protesters, under the banner of Coalition of Malaysian NGOs Against Persecution of Palestinians (Complete) carried the effigies of US President George W. Bush and Israeli President Shimon Peres. The crowd, which earlier burnt some effigies and Israeli flags on their way to the embassy, did the same again after the handover. In Kota Baru, Kelantan Menteri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat launched a fund for the Gaza people, before setting alight posters of Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

• Signs of a growing antiwar movement in Malaysia – On March 21, an antiwar protest of 7,000 took place in the northeastern state of Kelatan, where PAS controls the state government. Demonstrators burnt effigies of Bush and Blair and chanted “Destroy Bush” and “Long Live Islam”.

See? I don’t just point out UMNOpocrisy. I’m neutral, fair and objective about bashing ANY double-faced idiocy.

See also this letter complaining about burning of an effigy of a minister.

However, see also another ‘not so-and-so culture’ remark for comparison.

For the record, the warmongering, Iraqi-babykilling Bush the above guys are protesting saved 750,000 Iraqi lives with his evil imperialist invasion.

Hysterically screaming warnings that the Arctic ice is all melting away aren’t new. The New York Times has been doing it for 128 years:

1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”

1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”

1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”

1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”

1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”

1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”

1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”

1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”

1971: “STUDY SAYS MAN ALTERS CLIMATE; U.N. Report Links Melting of Polar Ice to His Activities”

1979: “A puzzling haze over the Arctic ice packs has been identified as a byproduct of air pollution, a finding that may support predictions of a disastrous melting of the earth’s ice caps.”

1982: “Because of global heating attributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fuel burning, about 20,000 cubic miles of polar ice has melted in the past 40 years, apparently contributing to a rise in sea levels …”

1999: “Evidence continues to accumulate that the frozen world of the Arctic and sub-Arctic is thawing.”

2000: “The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday.”

2002: “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported today.”

2004: “There is an awful lot of Arctic and glacial ice melting.”

2005: “Another melancholy gathering of climate scientists presented evidence this month that the Antarctic ice shelf is melting – a prospect difficult to imagine a decade ago.”

From Daily Telegraph via Moonbattery, which have links to each headline.

You would think such hsyterical alarmism would be long dead after 128 years of the same, flat out wrong predictions… Especially since Arctic ice is at the same levels as 1979 despite ever-increasing CO2 levels.

Even if the entire North Pole melts, it won’t really be as big a hoo-hah as the New York Times suggests. To understand why, add ice cubes to your drink until it reaches the brim and wait for the ice to all melt.

What’s more, any Arctic melt is more than compensated by record high and ever-increasing ice levels at the Antarctic – where in contrast to the floating, sea-bound Arctic ice, the ice and snow is landbound so actually does matter vis-a-vis sea levels.

Don’t worry about that either though… About an electrical transmission tower’s height worth of packed snow will have to melt to even go back to 1979 levels. See the pics and more evidence of a cooling world at Global Warming is Unfactual.

With Cilmategate still fresh off the presses (if the lie-beral media would practise some accountability and actually cover it), here comes Climategate New Zealand.

From the actual data which would result in this graph showing modern temperatures to be about on-par with the rest of history:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

To this heavily doctored fakery meant to shock and alarm an unknowing public about the dire rise in temperature of our times:

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

Via Moonbattery

When Bush golfed while two wars were ongoing and the deficit was dropping, the media excoriated him for his apparent carefree attitude – including Michael Moore, who did a trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11 based on it. (Bush responded by quitting the game for the remainder of his time in office.)

When Obama golfs ten times more frequently, while two wars and a recession and trillion dollar debt are ongoing, the media analyse how it takes times away from his basketball.

When Katrina happened, the media went wild with baseless claims of sniper attacks, cannibalism and how George Bush failed to act – including Kanye West ranting that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”.

When five states suffered intense freezing cold, Obama enjoyed a turned up thermostat and wagyu beef. Nary a peep from the media.

When liberals portrayed Bush and Condoleeza Rice (a black woman) as apes, it was lauded as creative freedom of speech. When Obama is portrayed similarly, it is racist hate and must be banned.

The same goes for witch doctors and the Joker.

And apparently, Bush is the only one who can be compared to Hitler or Nazis. If you carry protest signs denouncing Nazi-like Dem policies, you are slandered as Nazi-supporting.

When people repeatedly called for Bush’s death, the media covered it ‘objectively’. When one sign saying ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’ was spotted, the media went crazy over this ‘death threat’ against Obama.

Above from here.

When Bush exercised, the media called it ‘creepy’ and say it wastes time better spent leading. When Obama does it, they swoon and gush how it helps him do his job.

When the Bushs held a big dinner during a mild recession, they were lambasted for their ‘extravagance’. When the Obamas do it during 10.2% unemployment and 1.75 trillion debt, the media gush with teenage infatuation and avoid mention of the recession while praising the festivities – all 28 parties in December alone.

When Bush had a relatively low key inauguration in 2004 during a mild downturn, the media criticized his spending. When Obama had his massively grand inauguration during the ‘worst recession sinc the Great Depression’ which he was elected to reverse… Well, take a wild guess.

With Bush, the media’s job is to bash the President. With Obama, they think “above the world, he’s sort of God.”

When Rush Limbaugh recently said he hopes Obama’s policies fail, he is attacked – by the same man who hoped Bush would fail just minutes before 9/11.

When Bush enters, the media remain seated. When Obama enters, they stand for him.

No wonder we call them the Obamedia.

And what about the Dem supermajority Congress?

When hard-working, high-achieving black man Clarence Thomas and Latino Miguel Estrada were nominated by Bush, the Democrats dragged them through every hurdle and racial insult possible. When ‘wise Latina’ Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by Obama, suddenly she was the ‘first’ Latin American nominee and her opponents must be racists.

When Joe Wilson interrupted Obama’s speech shouting “You lie!”, he was criticized by the Dems. But guess who interrupted Bush back in 2006?

And guess who criticized Bush’s deficit, saying: ‘Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.… And now has himself achieved a 1.75 trillion deficit?

Via Gateway Pundit, via The Wall Street Journal:

Barack Obama has now played 25 rounds of golf, a sport he picked up about a decade ago when he was an Illinois state senator. That’s more golf than former President George W. Bush played in two terms, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential trivia. (In 2003, Mr. Bush quit golf, saying he did so out of respect for the troops serving in Iraq. Since leaving office, he has returned to the sport, an aide says.)

It took President Obama just just 9 months to match the number times President Bush played golf while in office over 8 years. Quite an achievement while the economy tanks, jobs go down the drain and two wars are ongoing – one that’s practically already won thanks to Bush and Petraeus (who have saved 750,000 Iraqi lives), and one that’s getting more and more bogged down as Obama refuses to bother with his responsibility as Commander in Chief.

As Gateway Pundit notes, it’s been over 3 months since the top general in Afghanistan requested more troops. Obama has still not made his decision on whether to support the US soldiers and marines in Afghanistan.

His mental faculties must all be tied down making the important decisions like whether to use a wood or an iron.

No wonder his approval rating is now at negative 15.

Via Day by Day: