Author: bill

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Climate facts to warm to | The Australian

I am not sure how this happens but tonight we had a snow flurry at the same time 60 Minutes was showing a piece about global warming. I thought our recent record cold weather would save us for a few months from Big Media’s over-hyping of global warming predictions. The gist of their piece was that this scientist was doing major public harm by having a view on climate science contrary to the “consensus” opinion. CBS was trying real hard to make the scientist look like a fool. It was an unnecessary hatchet job. Thirty minutes later I am reading a blog and I find this article from The Australian. This article reminded that I had read another similar article about a month ago. That article wondered why the actual temperature measurements were significantly lower than the recent IPCC predictions and speculated on the causes of the divergence. My guess is that many scientists recognize that there are serious problems with the temperature models and have quietly moved to the neutral position. It must have been a slow news night at CBS. Fact checking continues to be an optional exercise for CBS.

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday – on ABC Radio National, of all places – there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth still warming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”

Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”

Read the rest at Climate facts to warm to | The Australian

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Obama and Change

A black community activist was interviewed recently by a local radio station and was asked what she thought would be the impact on the community if Obama was elected president. She said,

I think we will have to come up with a new excuse. We can’t blame it on the man if he is one of us!

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What would Jesus do?

Every once and a while I wonder how we would react if someone like Jesus walked into our life. Would we act any different than the folks in the time of Jesus? If you follow this cartoon series, the guy with the funny hair was the bald, geeky guy with glasses. He is a reoccurring character in the cartoon strip. His encounter with Hay-soos has changed his appearance a little. Maybe you know a person like him in your office.

Dilbert Cartoon 12 Mar 2008

Comic for 12 Mar 2008
Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:01:00 GMT

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Blizzard 2008

Blizzard 2008aBlizzard2008bBlizzard2008c

This winter has been one of the coldest and wettest in recent memory. That was true before the latest storm to hit us. Yesterday we were hit with a blizzard that had the weather men and women thumbing through the record books. They are comparing this storm with a blizzard in the 1960’s. We are located just outside of Cincinnati so this snow fall is unusual. It is not going to break the record snowfall of 1998 but you get the picture. This storm is one for the record books. You can see in the photos how hard it came down. I measured twelve inches of snow outside our front door although it looked much deeper. It is going to be tough to get to the road. Click on any of the photos to see the slide show.

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Bernanke’s ‘Principal’ – Time to Panic!

The Federal Reserve Chairman tells bankers to create more losses by writing down mortgage loans.

I just saw this story, Bernanke’s ‘Principal’, in which he recommends re-negotiating existing mortgages at a much lower amount and forgiving the debtor for the difference. This is an incredible request since all of the pain will be born by the banks, the bank’s good customers, and the share holders. As a Treasurer for a nonprofit that issues mortgages, I am pretty sensitive to questions concerning mortgages, foreclosures, and fiduciary responsibility. We believe we have a responsibility to the home owners who continue to make payments, the community, our donors, and the volunteers who helped build the house, too. Most of our foreclosure situations are solved by either temporary lowering the monthly payments or extending the mortgage terms. Occasionally we exhaust all of our options and we have to foreclose. Its painful! We follow the rules that have serviced us well for years and we move on. One family’s failure is another family’s opportunity. Bernake is asking the bankers to commit unusual and questionable transactions that are possibly unethical and may subject the bankers to additional lawsuits. I guess it is time to panic. His actions are lowering confidence in an already shaky banking system.

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Sun setting on al Qaeda

This post is worth repeating.
— weh

The Financial Times, perhaps the most respected news journal in the English-speaking world, summarizes why al Qaeda is rapidly losing the hearts and minds of Arabs. Registration is required at the FT site, but AJStrata has an excellent summary. Quoting the FT piece:

In fact, in large measure because of what is unfolding in Iraq, the tide within the Islamic world is beginning to run strongly against al-Qaeda – and this, in turn, may be the single most important ideological development in recent years.

In November 2007 Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (”Dr Fadl”) published his book, Rationalizations on Jihad in Egypt and the World, in serialised form. Mr Sharif, who is Egyptian, argues that the use of violence to overthrow Islamic governments is religiously unlawful and practically harmful. He also recommends the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and its ideological leader, and calls the attacks on September 11 2001 a “catastrophe for all Muslims”. …

Another important event occurred in October 2007, when Sheikh Abd Al-’Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. …

A month earlier Sheikh Salman alAwdah, an influential Saudi cleric whom Mr bin Laden once lionised, wrote an “open letter” condemning Mr bin Laden. “Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al-Qaeda?” Sheikh Awdah wrote. “The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . cannot make Muslims happy.”

I pointed out in 2003 that Al Qaeda’s primary war is against other Muslims.

Sun setting on al Qaeda
Donald Sensing
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:56:00 GMT

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Opportunity Lost: The Failure Of California’s Health Reform

Here are two posts from the Health Affairs Blog concerning the unsuccessful health care reform in California. What I learned was that even when you have bi-partisan support health care reform is a tough proposition to advocate in a declining economy.

Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort California. Rick Curtis and Ed Neuschler, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable.

Kaiser Permanente views the failure to put the health reform legislation developed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Núñez before the voters as a major lost opportunity. The bill, which would have significantly expanded coverage, enacted comprehensive market reform, and begun much-needed delivery system reform, was supported by, and developed in conjunction with, a broad coalition of business, labor, providers, consumers and health plans. Organizations that rarely work together were willing to moderate their differences and stretch their comfort zones to achieve larger goals.

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Opportunity Lost: The Failure Of California’s Health Reform
Patricia Lynch
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:06:34 GMT

 

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort in California. Patricia Lynch, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable.

Although stymied by economic woes and governance constraints unique to California, the Golden State’s health care reform effort is particularly noteworthy because the serious attempt to address its outsize uninsurance problem may well serve as a model for other states and for the nation. The low-income uninsured (those with incomes under 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or FPL) in need of subsidies constitute a larger share of the nonelderly population in California (13.5 percent) than the national average (11.6 percent), and much larger than in Massachusetts (6.1 percent), based on 2005-2007 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). When it undertook reform, Massachusetts was in a unique position, facing a relatively small uninsurance problem and having available substantial federal funds that could be reprogrammed. A similar coverage framework would cost much more in California than in Massachusetts.

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California’s Shelved Health Care Reform