An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last ~ Winston Churchill

Since 2003, Europe — not the United States — has experienced a series of attacks, and near-constant threats, ranging from bombed subways and rail stations to Islamic demands to censor cartoons, operas, films, and papal exegeses. 

It is in Europe, not in post-Iraq Kansas, where a Turkish prime minister announces to Muslim expatriate residents that they must remain forever Turks and assimilation is a crime; it is in post-Iraq Europe, not Los Angeles, where politicians and churchmen talk of the inevitability of Sharia law; and it is in post-Iraq Europe, not the United States, where honor killings and Islamic rioting are common occurrences.

Why? A number of reasons, but despite all the misrepresentation and propaganda, the message has filtered through the Middle East that the United States will go after and punish jihadists — but also, alone of the Western nations, it will risk its own blood and treasure to work with Arab nations to find some alternative to the extremes of dictatorship and theocracy. Europe, in contrast to its utopian rhetoric, will trade with and profit from, but most surely never challenge, a Middle Eastern thug. Victor Davis Hanson, posting March 14, 2008 at National Review Online

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.  ~Author Unknown

 Global warming hucksters baffled over recent data…

Vow to press on until data support their assertions…

Another global warming oops

From climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center where he received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal:

“There are huge error bars on our observational estimates of feedback” used by the UN’s IPCC climate models. In other words, what scientists see doesn’t jibe with what is assumed to build the computer models. SNIP

“The fact is, we DON’T know how much of recent warming is natural,” Spencer says, “simply because we don’t have good enough global cloud observations back to the 1970’s (and earlier) to measure any long-term changes in cloudiness to the required accuracy – 1% or less. SNIP

“I fear that the sloppy science that too many climate researchers have lapsed into could, in the end, hurt our scientific discipline beyond repair. The very high level of certainty (90%) claimed by the IPCC for their manmade explanation for warming can not be justified based upon the scientific evidence, and is little more than an expression of their faith that they understand the causes of climate variability – which they clearly don’t. END EXCERPT, which appears courtesy OC Register.com

Then there’s The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat, excerpted here from a posting at Free Republic (my bold emphasis):

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. END EXCERPT

From the Australian (March 22, 2008) excerpted here are some “Climate Facts to Warm to”:

Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, when asked whether the Earth is still warming: 

"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." SNIP

The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant." SNIP

When asked to explain the temperature dip in spite of rising levels of greenhouse gases, Marohasy says:

(T)he head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

And it appears that the deep diving ARGO is not the only NASA system returning data that is baffling the so-called climate experts. In 2002, NASA launched its AQUA satellite, equipment specifically designed to collect data not only on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapor. 

By way of backgroud, many of the climate models that predict global catastrophe are based on the assumption that warming caused by rising carbon dioxide levels will result in increased water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere. Feedback from AQUA indicates that carbon dioxide and water vapor levels have risen over the past several years. But the results are contrary to what most global warming models predict. Again from Marohasy:

“What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Marohasy thinks the global climate is more robust than has been portrayed by some of the doomsayers, many of whom are having trouble getting their heads around some of the latest findings:

These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide. SNIP

The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point." END EXCERPT

Even though the planet is not warming up, the argument about global warming figures to get a lot more heated in the next few months. Hey, Goreacle: the debate about global warming is not over; it is just getting started…

Stay red…