My Personal Exposure to Paleoclimatology and Global Warming

My problem with the whole argument for man-made global warming is the narrowness of the time frame of observations being used.  My reservations are based on my personal experience.  I grew up in Missoula, Montana.  It was a prehistoric lake.  I was painfully aware of this as a kid, because anytime anybody tried to dig a hole to plant something there was about an inch of topsoil, an inch of gravel and then a seemingly infinite layer of big smooth boulders, most much bigger than the original size of the hole, that had to be removed.  It turns out that Lake Missoula got filled repeatedly as the result of ice dams on the Clark's Fork River 15,000 to 13,000 years ago.  Periodically the dams would break up suddenly and flood everything downstream with the contents of the Lake Missoula.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods

This personal experience and subsequent exposure to paleoclimatology led me to understand that climate varies quite widely over geologic time based on natural processes.  I believe that the state of our understanding of these natural processes is exceedingly incomplete.  We have had the computational power to study these processes for less than 30 years.  This is really not enough time to build all of the relevant factors into the models and then run them enough to understand the bugs and fix them.  If we are going to take action that requires drastic expensive changes to our economy, the burden of proof is on the people calling for the drastic expensive changes.  We should be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the changes are necessary.  It is not enough to find warming.  It has to be shown that the warming is caused by increased CO2 emissions or other alterations to the ecosystem that are the result of human activity. At this point, I think even showing the warming is a stretch.  It is definitely not proven that human activity is causing any warming observed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

I think the 135 year time span of the primary detailed observations leaves a lot of room for reasonable doubt, particularly since the satellite record for the last 36 years shows no change.  The obvious political motivations of the people behind the global warming movement, who seek unchecked absolute power through the control of all energy use, makes me believe they have the motive and opportunity for falsifying the data.  The fact that Michael Mann's famous hockey stick did not show the Medieval Warming Period at all should make everyone think that something is fishy.  When the Climate Research Unit refused to share the raw data and fought off a Freedom of Information Request by saying they accidentally erased the data, I really became suspicious.  Science is supposed to be open and reproducible.  Accidentally erasing the data is the scientific equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."  I have provided a link for the erased data incident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents

Personally, today I am dealing with 10 degree F weather in Chicago.  I have found global warming to date extremely disappointing.  Last year there was a 35 foot high pile of snow extending 100 feet along the edge of the parking lot where I work. When I posted a picture of it on my Facebook page, one of my friends wanted to know if it was Montana or Illinois.  I know some legitimate scientists take this very seriously.  But I believe that the planet is a very big place with a huge amount of water that is going to buffer whatever man does in the short run.  I think AGW is a political movement disguised as science.  I don't think AGW has met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  

Internet Neutrality: Regulate Like It's 1887

The latest atrocity in the ever expanding regulation of everything by the Obama Administration is regulating the internet as a common carrier justified by enforcing internet neutrality.  The putative purpose of the regulation is to make sure that all internet traffic is treated equally.  No company should be able to buy a fast track for its traffic.  The problem is especially acute in “the last mile,” where local municipalities have sold monopoly positions to cable and telephone companies which have jacked up prices.  If the problem is geographical monopolies on the last mile, then the solution is a federal law that outlaws them because they are an illegal local burden on interstate commerce. This would be a use of the Commerce Clause as it was actually intended.

The solution is not to allow the Feds to regulate the internet based on a law passed in 1934 for regulating telephone companies as common carriers, which itself was based on common carrier railroad regulation which was originally passed into law in 1887. The Interstate Commerce Commission powers to regulate railroads bankrupted a lot of them. Railroads were deregulated in 1980 and the ICC was abolished in 1995. Jimmy Carter signed the bill in 1980 and Bill Clinton signed the 1995 bill. The ICC was such bad news two Democrats signed bills to dismantle and kill it. Why would we want to resurrect this mess for the internet?

As a side comment, a nice Constitutional Amendment would be to make all laws expire in 50 years. If Congress doesn't see fit to reenact them, they should be gone. We could avoid 80 year old laws being used as excuses to regulate us. Why 50 years, you might ask?  Because we might need Democratic votes to get the 2/3 majority of votes in both Houses of Congress  needed to propose the amendment.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413854/obamacare-you-will-love-obamanet-deroy-murdock

Truth in Spending: Outlaw the Current Services Budget

Sorry, but it’s time to get a little wonky.  There’s a spending bias that built into how the government budgets called the current services budget.  This calculation is a baseline cost of doing next year exactly what the government did this year. Then budget "cuts" are measured from this base. If it would take $90 billion more to duplicate the current activities of the federal government next year, then spending $80 billion more next year than this year is a "cut" of $10 billion. As you can see, this builds in a bias for increased spending every year. What needs to be done is simple. No money should be spent by any federal agency to make a current services budget calculation. All budget baselines will be calculated based on current year actual spending. No need for a 50 page comprehensive bill. Stick it in a budget bill and let the Smartest President Ever try to explain why these two lines make the rest of the bill something he has to veto. I'm sure low information voters will love it. 

Death By Terrorism Unlikely, So No Worries?

Some people say that since the odds of being killed by a terrorist right now are much less than being killed by lightning, we shouldn’t spend much time worrying about it.  This position, that we don't need to fight terrorism because so far the odds of being killed by a terrorist are very, very low, reminds me of a bad joke. A man jumps off the Empire State Building. Half way down he comments, "OK so far!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413932/why-terrorism-more-frightening-lightning-charles-c-w-cooke