News

Brisbane gets coldest temperature in 103 years, Antarctic ice extents at record high

4 Comments

From The Australian.

Excerpt:

If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.

Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.

At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.

Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.

“The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”

And from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

The levels of Antarctic sea-ice last week hit an all-time high – confounding climate change computer models which say it should be in decline.

America’s National Snow And Ice Data Center, which is funded by Nasa, revealed that ice around the southern continent covers about 16million sq km, more than 2.1 million more than is usual for the time of year.

It is by far the highest level since satellite observations on which the figures depend began in 1979.

In statistical terms, the extent of the ice cover is hugely significant.

It represents the latest stage in a trend that started ten years ago, and means that an area the size of Greenland, which would normally be open water, is now frozen.

The Antarctic surge is so big that overall, although Arctic ice has decreased, the frozen area around both poles is one million square kilometres more than the long-term average.

In its authoritative Fifth Assessment Report released last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted that the computer models on which scientists base their projections say Antarctic ice should be in decline, not increasing.

The report said: ‘There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979, due to… incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change.’

So what about those climate simulations? Well… the UK Telegraph reports on that.

Excerpt:

When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago, when I was writing my history of the scare, The Real Global Warming Disaster. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

I wonder if taxpayers will get back the billions of dollars we wasted funding this flat-Earth theory? It was just junk science. Researchers adopted it to get grant money, governments adopted it to get more control of businesses and individual consumption. That’s it. It was just Santa Claus mythology.

News

How does each side of the Israel-Hamas conflict treat civilians?

5 Comments

You can learn everything you need to know about the Middle East conflict from this short video by Dennis Prager:

Now Israel is having about 80% of their country targeted by rocket attacks right now, and the attacks are designed to deliberately kill civilians. These are not military strikes designed to avoid civilian casualties, they are terrorist attacks designed to inflict civilian casualties.

Here is an article from leftist CNN that makes the point about Israel, Hamas and civilians.

Excerpt:

Israeli forces dropped leaflets in northern Gaza on Sunday to warn residents to move away from Hamas sites to avoid military strikes.

The warning came as the death toll in Gaza reached 168, with more than 1,100 people injured, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

About 70% of the fatalities were civilians, of which 30% — 27 people — were children, said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which said the figures came from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israel said its forces have struck 1,320 “terror targets” across Gaza, including 735 concealed rocket launchers.

Israel has used its Iron Dome defense system against many of the more than 800 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, the military said. Two more were intercepted Sunday over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

[…]Video on Hamas-run television showed a Hamas spokesman urging people to serve as human shields, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported Thursday.

[…]Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, regularly uses sites and facilities populated by civilians.

“The leadership of Hamas and the other organizations has chosen — at a time when they are using the population of Gaza as human shields — to hide under ground, to flee abroad and to deliberately put civilians in the line of fire,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday.

“This is the entire difference between us and Hamas — we are using defensive systems against missiles to protect the residents of Israel, and they are using the residents of Gaza to protect arsenals of missiles. Nothing better underscores the difference in this campaign. Israel is a democracy that is fighting — in a legitimate and focused manner — against unbridled terrorists,” he said.

[…]Throughout the conflict, Israel has warned Gaza residents of upcoming attacks targeting militants and terrorist infrastructure. On Twitter on Sunday, the IDF posted: “To warn civilians of an impending strike, the IDF drops leaflets, makes personalized phone calls & sends SMSes. How many militaries do that?”

“Sirens heard across (Israel). Gaza terrorists are firing barrages of rockets. Israel is under attack,” the IDF posted, with a photo asking “What would you do?”

[…]In leaflets dropped Sunday, the IDF warned residents that it intends “to attack terrorists and terror infrastructures.” The leaflets list areas that will be targeted. “Israel is currently attacking, and will continue to attack, every area from which rockets are being launched at its territory.”

The leaflets told residents which roads were safe to take and gave a time frame. “The IDF is not interested in hurting you or your family members. These operations are limited and short. Whoever does not adhere to these instructions and does not vacate their house immediately is subjecting their lives and the lives of their children and family to danger,” the leaflet said.

The Israeli military said it also drops empty shells on roofs, an operation it calls “roof knocking,” to alert civilians that airstrikes are imminent.

The goal of the airstrikes, the military said, is to get Hamas militants to stop firing rockets into Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel spent a ton of money on the “Iron Dome” missile defense system in order to protect Jewish and Arab residents of Israel.

So, I hope this is enough to explain to people that there is no moral equivalence between Israel and terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. If you are targeting civilians deliberately, you are a terrorist. It’s wrong, and only one side does it. Period.

I also want to point out that I have no religious reason for backing Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah in this conflict. I don’t like Israel’s anti-evangelism laws. But compared to the alternatives, they are the most pro-Western democracy in the area, and that’s why I support them. It’s strictly foreign policy and moral concerns. I am opposed to terrorism and to wage war against it, we need allies in the theater. Israel is always going to be looking out for Israel, not us, but they are a strong ally and we need to be encouraging them for that reason.

News

Should illegal immigrant children from Latin America be treated the same as those from Canada and Mexico?

1 Comment

Charles Krauhammer in the Mercury News.

Excerpt:

As is his wont, President Obama is treating the border crisis — more than 50,000 unaccompanied children crossing illegally — as a public relations problem. Where to photo op and where not. He still hasn’t enunciated a policy. He may not even have one.

[…]These kids are being flown or bused to family members around the country and told to then show up for deportation hearings. Why show up? Why not just stay where they’ll get superior schooling, superior health care, superior everything? As a result, only 3 percent are being repatriated, to cite an internal Border Patrol memo.

Repatriate them? How stone-hearted, you say. After what they’ve been through? To those dismal conditions back home?

By that standard, with a sea of endemic suffering on every continent, we should have no immigration laws. Deny entry to no needy person.

But we do. We must. We choose. And immediate deportation is exactly what happens to illegal immigrants, children or otherwise, from Mexico and Canada. By what moral logic should there be a Central American exception?

And:

Stopping this wave is not complicated. A serious president would go to Congress tomorrow proposing a change in the law, simply mandating that Central American kids get the same treatment as Mexican kids, i.e., be subject to immediate repatriation.

Then do so under the most humane conditions. Buses with every amenity. Kids accompanied by nurses and social workers and interpreters and everything they need on board. But going home.

One thing is certain. When the first convoys begin rolling from town to town across Central America, the influx will stop.

When he began taking heat for his laxness and indecisiveness, Obama said he would seek statutory authority for eliminating the Central American loophole. Yet when he presented his $3.7 billion emergency package on Tuesday, it included no such proposal.

Without that, tens of thousands of kids will stay. Tens of thousands more will come.

Why do they come? The administration pretends it’s because of violence and poverty.

Nonsense. When has there not been violence and poverty in Central America? Yet this wave of children has doubled in size in the past two years and is projected to double again by October. The new variable is Obama’s unilateral (and lawless) June 2012 order essentially legalizing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came here as children.

Message received in Central America. True, this executive order doesn’t apply to those who came after June 15, 2007. But the fact remains that children coming across now are overwhelmingly likely to stay.

Do you know what would be interesting? I think it would be interesting if the people who feel that having the government giving money to the poor had their current net worth and future earnings confiscated to pay for the $17.5 trillion national debt that we have now. The rest of us who prefer to use the money we earn for other priorities, like apologetics and Christian ministry, can continue to oppose wasteful spending. I wonder how many of the do-gooders would take that offer? Let them pull their children out of high-priced universities and sell their expensive suburban homes to pay for the things their mouths speak about.

I have my own life to live. I don’t see the politicians sitting next to me at work helping me earn my salary. Why don’t they spend their own money on the things they care about, and leave me to spend mine on the things I care about? I don’t get up to go to work every day for secular socialist priorities.