> I wouldn't be surprised to find he
> really doesn't believe in god.

It's weird how this is the second time he's been tripped up by religion, and he's not even in the White House yet. In olden days, politicians were able to just slide around these matters.

Obama's already made it perfectly clear that he cares not a lick for his constituents. He knows that they will never abandon him, no matter the indignity he imposes upon them.

This is a clear pander to the evangelicals, and an unsmall number of them will turn their political support to Obama, because he chose "one of us" for his invocation.

I don't know or care if he believes in God. I do know that he believes in Algore, and is stacking his cabined with people who wish to impose their Global Warmist agenda upon us. His choices to run NOAA, Energy, EPA? All warmists. All believe that we need to take drastic action to destroy the economy now to forestall the melting of the planet. You want to talk about believe absent evidence? While there might not be any evidence of God, there isn't any evidence that there is no God. However, there are piles and piles of evidence that there's no global warming, and they persist in believing in it.

And I find it interesting that you figure Obama mustn't believe in God because you bought the marketing hype that he's a smart guy. Obama's a garden variety moron. His support team are the only thing keeping him from drooling on himself.

He is a moron, and you can be rational and believe in God. It's no less rational than saying you believe you love Gregg, or that Gregg loves you. There's no "proof" of that that can't be attributed to other things. Even you sleeping on a hospital floor doesn't prove love.

Brian, do you ever do anything, anything at all ever, besides bitterness and contempt?

"His support team are the only thing keeping him from drooling on himself."

I have been hearing shades of this already, that while his staff is trying to bring him up to speed in his briefings, he keeps spouting campaign pablum, to be met with stony silence from the people trying to actually get things done.

Juliana, can you link any of those sources?

We gotta remember that he's never actually done anything for anyone. He's a very schmart feller. But like Dubya and Clinton before him, he gives an impression of being ideologically undercooked.

Crid - when it comes to politicians? No. Bitterness and contempt is pretty much all I feel for them, except for the few that drive me to homicidal rage.

And Obama's NOT a 'smart feller'. He give the impression of someone who has a few pre-programmed sound bites, and as soon as he goes off script, he's as lost as a Cocker Spaniel at the end of its leash.

It's going to become apparent very rapidly that everything he's gotten has come to him because it benefits someone else to have his charisma front and center.

> when it comes to politicians?

Any topic, any day. You always, always report fresh rage at boundary violations. Ever hear a bird sing? See a pretty sunset? Bite into a tasty sandwich? The holidays are the perfect time to take inventory of one's immortal soul. Zen, karma, the Power of Positive Thinking, Winning Friends and Influencing People, all that stuff. Cheer up.

> And Obama's NOT a 'smart feller'.

The Harvard Law Review isn't edited by fools. Many, many people made the indulgent mistake of calling Bush stupid, and they had a long four years. Then they had another long four years. Served 'em right, too.

Ever hear a bird sing? See a pretty sunset? Bite into a tasty sandwich?

Yes. But none of those things is likely to make me forget my hatreds. And most of the posts Amy makes aren't really "happy" shit, and therefore wouldn't get me to talk about such things.

The holidays are the perfect time to take inventory of one's immortal soul. Zen, karma, the Power of Positive Thinking, Winning Friends and Influencing People, all that stuff.

What if you don't believe in immortal souls, or souls at all?

And there is no power of positive thinking. Although I will say that the epnoymous book is one of the stupidest hunks of pabulum I ever tried to read. I figured that "How to win friends and influence people" was probably going to be more of the same. I had a boss that wanted me to read "7 habits of highly effective people", I told him I had better things to do with my time. And someone once suggested "The purpose-driven life" and I nearly puked.

The Harvard Law Review isn't edited by fools.

Obama edited it without ever having had anything published in it. You typically don't get editorial duty until you've been shown to have a clue. This schmuck comes out of nowhere and they hand it to him?

Everything he has ever "accomplished" he has done so with no effort whatsoever. Someone else was always "taking the exam".

Bush wasn't stupid, but he sure acted like it.

Obama IS stupid. It's only a matter of time before he gets into a situation where his handlers can't save him.

However, there are piles and piles of evidence that there's no global warming, and they persist in believing in it.

I love how you can say this and in the very same comment claim that someone else isn't smart. Here's a clue; Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

DuWayne -

My liking it or not is irrelevant.

There is no evidence of Anthropogenic Climate Change. So far, all we have are data sets that have been manipulated for political gain.

I knew that "Global Warming" was bunk almost immediately, and I didn't even need to look at the science. All I looked at were the names.

James Hansen
Paul Ehrlich

and scores of others. And they all had something in common. They were all at the forefront of the "Human activity is causing a new ice age" movement in the late 1970s.

And amazingly enough, their solution then was identical to their solution now: cripple the industrial world, and submit to the control of an educated elite who would save us from ourselves.

One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet - if Paul Ehrlich says it, it's almost certainly false.

"...relentless clerical businessman.."
Well put.

I knew that "Global Warming" was bunk almost immediately, and I didn't even need to look at the science.

Which explains an awful lot about how you view the world. I could spend all day arguing with you, presenting evidence - generally wasting my time. But I have fun things to do with my time and my man Coby has already indexed a great deal of evidence and answers to pretty much every damned argument you could come up with. You, and those who go against the massive scientific consensus are not Galileo. Sometimes bucking the system, being the maverick is a reasonable position to take. It certainly does feel good to think you're right and everyone else is wrong. But sometimes when one disagrees with pretty much everyone, it's because they're wrong.

Consensus is not science. It's politics.

And I'm not about to get into a detailed rebuttal of your buddy there, but suffice it to say that Hansen has been caught manipulating the data several times. And that manipulated (falsified) data is the basis for most of the IPCCs pronouncements of imminent doom.

The hockey stick was a lie. When Hansen got called on it, he refused to release his methodology, and the NASA datasets mysteriously got updated.

We are very likely on the verge of absolute proof that the greenhouse theory is false. Emissions have been rising steadily since 1998, yet there has been almost no warming. By the time the data for 2008 are tabulated, it will show that all the warming of the past three decades went away -- in the span of one year.

And we are also very likely entering an extended cooling period on account of the sun taking a nap.

Hansen is far from the only one studying climate change. And consensus in science is when a large number of scientists do independent research and come to the same conclusion. There are virtually no meteorological scientists who do not accept global warming and believe that we need to do something about it.

As for your "arguments," please see the first link in my last comment. He can and has rebutted it - with evidence to back his rebuttal.

DuWayne -

There are a great (and growing every day) number of meterological, climate, and physical scientists who do not accept AGW.

Until recently (about 2006) anybody who didn't toe the line was excommunicated. One of the lead meteorologists at The Weather Channel suggested that any meteorologist that did not accept AGW as fact should have their AMS certification revoked. Others in the Warmist movement have compared skeptics to holocaust deniers, and have even advocated for "nuremburg-style" trials of skeptics for crimes against humanity.

The only reason that any traction has been gained recently is because it's kind of hard to look at the data gathered and say that it supports any linkage between CO2 emissions and global mean temperature.

The reason that they hysteria is reaching a fever pitch is because the warmists realize that their dreams of power and control are slipping through their fingers as the world won't conform to their arrogant and narrow definitions.

Just remember that every single prediction the warmists have made in the past 15 years has failed to come true, while global carbon emissions have increased dramatically. Europe has missed every emissions-control target they set, and the oceans aren't rising. The US un-signed Kyoto, and the North Pole failed to melt as predicted.

Global Warming is the latest in a series of attempts by socialists to take control by scaring people into believing that consumer-based capitalism will destroy the world.

brian -

I presented you with the evidence that debunks everything you're saying. You haven't presented any evidence to the contrary. On top of that, you're drifting into the realm of tin foil hat conspiracy theory. If it's a socialist attempt to take over, why are there just as many conservative climatologists claiming you're wrong, as there are liberal climatologists making that claim?

Put up or shut up.

Or to put it simply, you are not a credible source for climate change information. Show me someone who is who makes the same assertions you are.

Other than the socialist one (which is really political, and not scientific, but it's awfully curious how all the environmental organizations are populated with arch-liberals to the left of Al Gore) there are plenty.

We can start with Bjorn Lomborg, who was excommunicated for saying that even though he believes in warming, it's not catastrophic.

Then we can move on to any of the 650 scientists in the last Senate report. For instance, the founder of The Weather Channel.

For starters, go here.

When scientists from IPCC are leaving and saying that IPCC has it wrong, you have to wonder.

I'm sorry, but your friend there has drunk the kool-aid.

One last thing - you'd probably be interested in knowing that GISS (Hansen's group) produces one of the only four sets of temperature numbers that are used in climate change research. And the GISS numbers have been found to have SIGNIFICANT flaws, in measurement, in methodology, and in reporting.

GIGO.

formatting error - the weather channel guy isn't in the senate report. he was supposed to be in another sentence before I went and edited things.

Then we can move on to any of the 650 scientists in the last Senate report. For instance, the founder of The Weather Channel.

Tim Lambert of Deltoid has a decent response to that one, found here. And if you take a gander at his blog, Tim's not exactly a socialist.

Inhofe isn't exactly an unbiased source.

As for the run on scientists leaving the IPCC, I am not finding it. Tried several google searches and nothing comes up.

I'm sorry, but the only kool-aid drinker I see thus far is you.

Thanks for the video, Crid. Brian was starting to harsh on my holiday wow. I always said that if I got married again, I wanted that to be my wedding song.

I don't pay much attention to this topic, and have no info on the studies. But how to global warming people counter the fact that there were no ice caps during the dinosaurs? Ice ages, that subsequently warmed up, then cooled back down to more ice ages? Seems to be intuitive that earth's climate changes drastically and frequently. And has for billions of years before we got here. Not to say we dn't need to change some things. The amount of crap going into landfills would be one problem. But it's a problem to us, not the earth. Earth willl be just fine after we've killed ourselves off.

momof3 -

If you go to the first link I made, Coby explains it in greater detail and provides evidence for this assertion. Put simply, yes, the earth has always gone through cycles of warming and cooling, but they haven't been anywhere near as rapid as global warming.

As far as the notion that the earth will survive, I am right there with you. I have a great book called The Atlas of Life on Earth. In the front is a spiral timeline detailing the history of our planet, from when it first began to coalesce. Life has come and quite nearly completely gone, more than once. And when it gets to the planet since evolution produced protohumans, it is represented by a infinitesimal line on the very end.

Humbling and awe inspiring.

For more on the value of consensus, see here.

Scroll down a little.

And again, this so-called "rapid global warming" came to a rather abrupt halt around 1998, leaving Hansen et. al. scrambling to fudge the data and the models to reflect this.

They have, thus far, failed to explain the halt and subsequent cooling.

Earth's climate is a negative feedback system. It takes one hell of a perturbation to knock such a thing off balance. The warmists want us to believe that we have somehow so damaged the environment that global mean temperatures will increase without bound. But given that we can't create a perturbation anywhere near as large as the Earth itself generates, I just don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that we are going to cause permanent changes to the climate.

Unless by "permanent" one means "none at all".

Climate is not weather. And in the long term, we are nowhere near the warmest the Earth has ever been since the dawn of Man. And the likelihood of us overshooting that point and making the Earth uninhabitable just isn't supported by what we presently know about physics and natural systems.

The IPCC models are all critically flawed, as are all climate and weather models. At least Lorenz was willing to admit that those flaws were inherent to the modeling process. IPCC seems to think that when their models and reality do not coincide, it is reality that is at fault. This is a dangerous assertion.

Thanks for the video, Crid. Brian was starting to harsh on my holiday wow. I always said that if I got married again, I wanted that to be my wedding song.

Wait, telling you that we aren't all gonna die in a cataclysmic flood is harshing on your mellow?

How could anyone take the news that we're all gonna die as positive and still be looking forward to Christmas?

It's all in the delivery, Brian.

We're all gonna die someday, individually and as a species. I can work to stall that particular day in my own small ways, but I don't really let it ruin my mood.

Happy Holidays to you and everyone.