I do not think there is any doubt that Carbon Dioxide gas can and does
cause the greenhouse effect.
the problem is, our information on this is based on studying Venus.  A
planet with 96% carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.
Our atmosphere has such a tiny fraction of carbon dioxide, it is difficult
to be certain that it can effect global temperature.

Here is my analogy:
you have an aquarium:  15 gallons.  You need to keep it warm for your
tropical fish:  80F in a house that can be as cold as 65F, so you buy an
aquarium heater, maybe 20 watts.  Problem solved.

You put in a pool:  15000 gallons.  You need to keep it warm, 70F is good
enough, and the outside temperature varies from 50-90F, so you put
your aquarium heater in the pool.  Is the aquarium heater going to change
the temperature of the pool at all?  Certainly not.  Wind, sunshine, rain,
air temperature, even a bunch of kids swimming in the pool are going to
overwhelm any effort the 20 watt heater can make.

Here is the kicker:
The aquarium heater might make a _measurable_difference_.  Take enough
measurements over a long enough period of time, and you might notice that
the average temperature of the pool went from 70.35 degrees one year
to 70.39 degrees the next.  so the aquarium heater actually works.

But you can not extrapolate that eight aquarium heaters left on in your pool
for fifty years would move the temperature of the pool from 70.35 degrees
to 86.35 degrees, which is what the global warming folks are trying to tell
us.  Other factors simply overwhelm the tiny effect, and it is not cumulative.

There are plenty of things to worry about in this world:
Nuclear proliferation, Meteoroid strikes, Financial market failure, Antibiotic
resistant diseases.
Not carbon dioxide.  Carbon dioxide is consumed by plants.  More carbon
dioxide=more plants.  in fifty years, we could be past the peak of carbon
based power.  Surely in one hundred fifty.  Worse case scenario in one hundred years:
The ocean rises by ten inches, We get more rain, and the Canadians can grow rice.
That’s not so bad.  Humans are adaptable.
After we switch over to whatever the next power source is, the carbon
dioxide levels may fall, and we may find that we miss our very green earth.

The mid-evil warm period was the last time we had a peak of temperature
on the earth.  Historically, it is supposed to have been about 1.5 to 2 Celsius
degrees warmer than it is right now.  There is some dispute about that, but
the Vikings had farms on Greenland, so you tell me.  Anyhow, the mid evil
warm period was the heyday of written history.  It resulted in the renaissance.
I don’t think that is so bad.

Think carefully.

If I tell you that killing an unborn child the day before he is delivered is morally the same as killing the same newborn infant two days later, you would probably agree with that.  You should, because really they are morally equal.

So when a panel of progressive ethicists says exactly that, then lets stand up and applaud.  For once a finding we can all agree on!

What we probably do not agree on is what this means.

To me, it means that, since it is morally wrong to kill an infant, it is equally morally wrong to kill an unborn infant two days earlier.  This seems intuitively obvious to me.

This progressive think-tank has done more to answer the question:  “what is wrong with having an abortion” than all the arguments about when the fetus has fingers or toes or whatever combined.

A progressive and I were talking.  I know that sounds like a pointless exercise, and largely, it is, but still, they amuse me, so I talk to them.

My progressive friend talked about how Obama was handed a terrible economy, and is trying to make good on it, while Bush was handed a strong economy and crashed it.  Obviously, I had to remind him that the year before Bush took office, NASDAQ fell by half, and the “tech bubble” was already creating losses which lead to a sharp drop in the DOW.  That is to say:  Bush did not inherit a strong economy, but he did make the best of what he was handed.

To which, my progressive friend asked:  “why can’t conservatives take responsibility for anything that goes wrong?”

I laughed.

But he makes a great point.  And I would like to answer him with a little story:

Lets imagine a world where Science, Economics, Reason and Logic simply do not work.  In this imaginary world, people still study Economics, and they develop the same theories that we have in the real world.  But the theories don’t work.  Mathematicians say that one plus one equals two, but not always.

In this world, you can raise the price of gasoline, for instance, and demand may not drop at all.  Demand might actually go up.  Same thing for taxes.  In this imaginary world we will call Libotania, none of the tools that conservatives use to evaluate and fix the economy work.  Instead, what does work is progressive ideas.  Anything a progressive can think of simply works, as though by magic.  Back to the gasoline example, if a progressive thinks that raising the price of gasoline by ten cents will cut demand in half, then that is actually what happens, no matter how contrary to logic and economics it may seem at the time.  If the progressive then declares that reducing the price of gasoline by one penny will cut demand in half again, that works too.  Libotania is a wonderful world!

In Libotania, the world is upside-down.  Progressives are always right.  Conservatives may occasionally get things right, but this is only by happenstance.  (much the way things occasionally work out in the real world for Democrats).

In Libotania, there are still Republicans.  They still run for office, and they are occasionally elected.  But when they are elected, unless they follow the rules laid down by a progressive, the economy usually tanks.  Everyone with any memory at all knows that this is what happens, and yet, somehow, Republicans still occasionally get elected.

If you asked a progressive in Libotania:  “why can’t progressives take responsibility for anything that goes wrong?”

The progressive would probably laugh.

Let me first apologize for not being interested enough in the presidential race to write about it.  Paul, the fiscal conservative wants the gold standard, legalized drugs, and to leave our allies in the middle east–Israel–to the dogs; all dumb ideas.  Rick is as fiscally conservative as G W Bush.  Romney may be slightly more fiscally conservative, but I do not trust he will roll back anything.  Gingrich is the one I trust to get the job done, but the social conservatives are not impressed with him.  Sort it out, but don’t expect me to cheer about it.

So what I can write about is the stupidity still pouring out of the global warming clueless.  Where to start!  Every conversation about global warming must start with the hockey stick graph.  This graph was created by now discredited climatologist Michael Mann, and implies that global warming was suddenly accelerating.  The graph is still defended today by scientific illiterates, even though its implications have long since been proven to be alarmist hyperbole.

The latest false claims of the church of global warming center around sea level.  It is a fact that sea level changes–the same way mountain ranges change in altitude.  If one wants to claim that sea level is rising, one must do better than take two measurements a decade apart.  There has been no compelling evidence that the changes in sea level over the past decade are significantly different than the changes in sea level in the decades preceding.  I would very much like to look at the data, but rather than making as much data as possible as readily available over the internet, there has been a move to make public access to sea level data more difficult.  A quick visit to the NOAA site is all you need in order to confirm this.

Let us suppose that the ice is melting, a claim that has been, at the very least greatly exaggerated.  The lion’s share of evidence for ice melting comes from the north pole.  When the reporters tell us about this, their very next line is inevitably about sea level rising.  This galls me on so many levels, but one point needs to be made clearly here:

YOU COULD MELT EVERY BIT OF THE ICE ON THE NORTH POLE, AND SEA LEVEL WOULD NOT CHANGE.

This is because the ice on the northern ice cap is floating.  The displacement of a floating mass of ice is the same as the displacement of the water produced by melting that ice.  This is because displacement of floating objects is based on mass, and the mass of the water does not change when it melts.  In point of fact, the ice actually decreases in volume as it melts, but that decrease in volume will eventually be offset as the water temperature rises above 4C (40 Ferinheight).  2000 years ago, any Greek or Roman scholar would have easily understood this, based on the writings of Archimedes.

Of course, such fundamental truths do not seem to be a stumbling block for the politics of global warming.

I went to a movie premier for “revenge of the electric car”.

I went because I love cars, I love technology, and I went with a friend who is a fellow car-guy.  The movie producer was there for a question session afterward.  The movie was actually pretty good.

But the question and answer session afterward was just nutty.

I sat and listened as they celebrated the fact that the pipeline for Canadian oil was shut down, and then carped about why the Republicans were so against electric cars.

Honestly, I do not know a single Republican who is “against” electric cars.  I know plenty who think we should not be subsidizing windmills and electric cars, but I hardly reguard that as being “against” electric cars.  I have to ask why this is all a zero sum game to the enviro-nuts.  I have no problem with them building and buying electric cars, even though I think the technology is not quite there yet.  So why is it so important to them that they destroy the oil industry?

Part of the movie centers around the GM car EV1.  The movie carps on and on about how a back room deal destroyed that technology.  The implication is that this technique is objectionable and wrong.  And yet…  The same technique used on a pipeline is celebrated as a great victory.

The results of their victory–the shutdown of the pipeline–are that the oil must be instead trucked across the frontier.  How does that count as a victory for the environment?  Answer:  it is no victory for the environment, but they believe that if they keep putting up as many roadblocks as possible in the parts of the economy that they most object to, then they feel they are doing good.  Just listening to them talk makes me ill.  My father-in-law calls this the “age of the intimidator”, and so it is.

We really need to stick that phrase to Obama.

“too big to fail”

because this is what it means:  Small business does not matter at all, we only care about the big corporate fat-cats.

Let me break that down for you.

There are corporatist Republicans–you guys know who you are, you think big business should rule everyone and everything, damn the consequences.  I don’t like you guys, but you are a whole lot better than the socialist/communists, so I tolerate you.  Most Republicans are not corporatists.  Most of us believe in freedom, liberty and individuals.  Most of us are for small business, and big business is okay, because we do not hate people just for being successful.  Still, we really like small business and innovation.

Too big to fail says that big business gets advantages.  If small businesses come along and eat your lunch, it’s okay, big business, the American taxpayer will step in and help you out.  If your business is making cars or selling stock, or bank insurance, doesn’t matter, the American tax payer has deep pockets.

This is the Obama message.  If you are a rich corporate fat-cat, just relax–uncle Sam and uncle O are going to look out for you.

The right message is this:  too big to fail means too big.  If a business really is too big to fail, I mean seriously, if we cannot let that business die, then it needs to be cut in half right now.  Maybe in thirds, fourths, or fifths, just like they did to the Telephone companies, because if you hand a business failure insurance, you are asking them to fail.  Cut ‘em apart and have ‘em compete.  Cut ‘em into small enough pieces that if one of the pieces fail, it does not destroy the economy.  Too big to fail means too big to exist. Who wants to be too big to fail now?

Talking to the hipster-doofus people occupying the parks is pointless.  Those people are out to lunch.  But there are plenty of independents out there that need to understand what too big to fail really means.  Lets tell them, and see if they still think Obama is the hero of the little guy.

I have just heard from two sources whose names I have agreed not to disclose that there is conclusive proof that Republican Herman Cain is a Vampire-Warewolf from another planet.

While not specific about what their evidence shows or how it was obtained, I am assured by my three independent sources that the only reason they will not come forward with their evidence is because of a mind-control hex put on them by Tea Party activists.

Mitt Romney is probably a great guy.  I have never met him, but I have known a fair number of Mormons who are successful businessmen and politicians, and I usually really like them.  Four years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to vote for a guy like Romney.  The polls say I am not alone–Romney was very popular with conservatives four years ago, but we just do not seem very excited about him now.

What happened?

Pundits have pointed out that Romney is still the same guy, he does well in the debates, no major gaffes, so what gives?  Why does he poll so badly now?

The answer is this:  four years ago, most of us were okay with the status quo.  The economy was okay, the stupid programs the liberals had forced on our businesses were taking their toll, but it was just a cost of doing business.  Really, we figured things would be fine if we let the libs have their couple extra percent of the economy every year, and we kept the total cost down.  Finish up those foreign wars and get back to business.

What we did not know was that the slow cancer of progressive policy had eaten so deeply into the structure of our union, and was about to cause major failures.  We did not predict that the seemingly minor sabotage of the housing market by Fanny and Freddy would damage our economy so badly.  Add to this that we n0w we have a new social entitlement known as Obamacare that will hasten our downfall if we cannot cut it out, and soon.

The prognosis is not good.  No major entitlement has ever been removed.  The Dems knew that when they passed this turkey, they knew it would be difficult or impossible to remove.  So not matter how bad Obamacare was revealed to be, they could fix it later, so long as it was shoved into law before it could be stopped.

Conservative voters today are not the conservative voters of four years ago.  We are no longer complacent to the disease that ails us, willing to live with it as a cost of doing business.  We want it rolled back, we demand it be removed.  We have been converted from those satisfied to keep the status quo into those who insist on action, and a new direction.

Mitt Romney has not changed.  He is still a great guy–but we no longer look at him the same way, because he just does not seem like an agent of change.  We desperately need an agent of change.

I have been a strong supporter of Michele Bachmann, and I continue to be, despite what I am about to write.  Probably I could have written this before, but I did not have the heart to attack her.  It seems pretty clear to me that she is out of the running for president, so I do not feel any compunction or guilt for writing here what is true.

Michele made a mistake about immunizations.  To be fair, it is a common mistake–many parents of disabled children are aware of the (now discredited) article linking autism to immunizations.  At least one of the authors of that paper now admits that the data was faked, even though others maintain that the conclusions reached are correct.  Michele should know better than to make this claim about immunizations, a claim based in bad science.

Michele was correct that immunizations are not without risk.  I am a strong proponent of universal immunizations, and I know that immunizations have prevented and continue to prevent disease in the US and in the world.  The disease prevented far out measures the side effects that are caused by immunization–by at least a hundred fold, and probably by a million fold in most cases.  Even so, we must admit that immunizations have risk.  Mental impairment has never proved to be one of those risks.

Sorry Michele.  I still support you for president, and would vote for you in a second, but you made a mistake there.

Science is about the provable.  If you have a paper with conclusions you agree with, that still does not matter if the paper is based on bad data.  If everyone you know also agrees that the conclusions of that paper were right, it still does not matter if the paper is bad science.

Which brings me to my point.  Green science.  Every major paper that alleges to prove “global warming” is caused by CO2 elevation has been proven to be based on fake data and bad statistical models.  We disprove one paper, and, like playing ‘whack a mole’, ten more pop up, so the most recent papers have not yet been disproved, but they will be.  How do I know this?  Because I am a scientist, and an expert at detecting good research.

If we hold Michele to the standard that her research must not be based on research that is now disproved, why not hold the ‘global warming’ folks to the same standard?

my credentials:

I am a physician, with an MD from the University of Miami in 1992, I am currently licensed in the state of Minnesota, and I am board certified in two specialties in Pathology.  I am a clinical Pathologist, which means I run laboratories, and research patient care issues related to laboratory testing.  My areas of special interest are medical data coding and parasitology, and I hold two patents.

disprove ‘global warming’ in 100 words:

CO2 is elevated in the atmosphere–provably true–but this does not cause significant global warming or significant changes in sea level.  The concentration of H2O in our atmosphere is highly variable, but always at least a dozen times more than CO2, and often more than a hundred times higher.  H2O is a more active ‘greenhouse gas’ than CO2.  Weather (Climate) is a chaotic system, which is partly buffered by the presence of atmospheric H2O, and when an external force is applied to a buffered chaotic system, that force may slightly shift the mean of the chaotic system, but will not have a lasting affect, unless it eliminates the buffering on the system.

I would not advocate ignoring the CO2 elevation–this is a significant finding which should be studied carefully.  It should be studied calmly, without hysteria.

Let me start by pointing out the obvious.  There is no such thing as race.  Maybe this is not so obvious to everyone, but take it from someone who has studied the biology of race, it really is skin deep.  We humans look at the face of another human, and we tune into things like nose width, skin color, hair, and we think we can tell something about the person we are looking at.  Maybe we are right about two thirds of the time, and that reinforces our belief that we can tell something about another human this way.

But it is not true.  There are more differences between people of the same race than there are similarities, from political beliefs to enzyme structure and everything in between.  Race is just a construct that holds together because most people in Europe have light skin, and most people in Africa have dark.  You really cannot tell anything by race.  Even skin color–caused by a pigment called melanin–is chemically the same in every person (except maybe albinos–who exist in all “races”)  When I look at skin through my microscope, I cannot tell European from Asian from African.  We are all the same color in chemistry.

So when someone asks you about the “Black Vote”, anything you say can be misconstrued as negative racism.  Even if your name is Herman Cain.

Anyone who knows anything about Herman Cain knows that this man is not a racist.  We look at him, and we believe that he is of African origin, but really he is just another American.  And we are all so used to hearing MSNBC talk about the “Black Vote” that we forget that the entire concept of a “Black Vote” is completely racist, because it does not take into consideration that dark skin does not imply voting preference.  the “Black Vote” is shorthand invented by the liberal press for economically depressed inner city populations that tend to be mostly dark skinned.  I have plenty of relatives–of all skin tones–who would fall into the “Black Vote” category.

So, was this a gaffe?  Do we call Herman Cain a racist for falling into the the trap of trusting a term created by liberal racists?  Surely not.

The problem is this:  Race relations exist.  We fool ourselves into believing that there really is a group called “Blacks” and a group called “Whites” and another called “Hispanics”.  We forget that almost nobody fits perfectly into any of these groups.  Yet we use these categories as a short hand way to identify people, or groups of people–because our brains like to categorize.  But race is a construct, and it no more predicts voting behavior than the “Tall Vote” or the “Ginger-Hair Vote”  (although I have heard that most gingers vote independent–kidding!)

We cannot discuss race relations without toeing the line of racism itself.  And there is no way to teach our children not to be racist, without addressing the issue of race relations.

Opportunists will scream “RACISM”.  When they do, it is almost always themselves revealed as racists, bigots, and opportunists.

The only real way to end racism is to end racism.  No more reporting about the “Black Vote” or “Black Unemployment” or “Black Poverty”.  Illegal aliens are illegal aliens whether from Germany or Mexico.  And need based scholarships go to individuals in need, without regard to skin color.  These steps we can take to end racism.  A government that discriminates, and treats people differently based on race is a racist government; a government that insists on putting race on census forms, college applications, and death certificates is a racist government.