November, 2018, Part 2,I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Bad Political Policy Caused The California Wildfires, Not Global Warming

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaim.

1) Unless you are totally out of touch with current events, you know that California is suffering through some massive wildfires. Tragically, many have died, many more are missing and the property damage is massive. Of course, global warming advocates are never going to pass up a tragedy like this to advocate for their climate and global warming positions, even if it means pathetically doing their advocacy when people are still grieving and suffering.

But before we get to this current wildfire situation let’s review the reality from wildfires in a scientific, data driven, reality perspective. Consider the following set of real data that we have previously talked about concerning wildfires:

Wild Fires

Research by James Taylor, writing for Forbes magazine, found that “2013 was one of the quietest wildfire years in U.S. history.” If global warming/climate change was such a bad thing from a weather perspective, one could expect to see a growing trend of wildfires as severe weather, droughts, etc. resulting in more wildfires.

But according to a government agency, the National Interagency Fire Center, an entity that tracks the number of forest fires every year and has been doing so since 1960, well before global warming theory took hold: 

• The year 2013 had the fewest forest fires since data tracking began.
• From 1962 through 1982, there were at least 100,000 forest fires tracked every one of those years. But since 1982 there has not been a single year where forest fires totalled above 100,000.
• Fifty years prior, in 1964, forest fires totalled three times as many vs. 2014 and burned up twice as many acres.
• Twenty years ago, in 1994, there were 79,000 forest fires vs. 63,000 in 2014.

But this is not the only source of real data that shows forest fires, and the severe weather that might affect them, is down on a historical basis despite global warming/climate change:

• According to the Weather Underground, the two largest forest fires in American history occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• The first of these forest fires occurred in Wisconsin 1871 and burned 3.8 million acres and killed 1,500 people.
• The second worse forest fire hit Idaho and Montana in 1910 and destroyed 3 million acres and killed 87 people.
• The 47,579 forest fires in 2013 destroyed only 4.3 million acres, an average of 90.79 acres per fire.
• Furthermore, research in 2009 analysis by R.M. Beaty and A.H. Taylor researched charcoal records in northern California to study wildfires over thousands of years. They concluded that “current fire episode frequency is at one of its lowest points in at least the last 14,000 years.” And certainly manmade global warming and climate change was not a topic of concern or a reality 14,000 years ago.

That whole post where the above passage was taken, a post that also looks at other types of natural disasters, can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/06/june-2015-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

So yes, the California wildfires raging today are very, very bad. But are they really just a statistical anomaly which is what real data would show? You cannot take one situation, today’s California wildfires, and all of a sudden throw out thousands of years worth of real data to conclude man made global warming is the culprit. One data point is not a trend.

Let’s look at another set of real data from that same post referenced above:

Roger Pielke Jr. is an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in Colorado. On may 22, 2015 he a graph on his blog that showed a slight DECREASE in global droughts since 1982, a time period of extensive worries about global warming and weather. His data is based on a 2013 publication in the magazine Nature which tracked “historical drought severity data.”

Fraction of the Globe in Drought: 1982-2012



The graph above shows the proportion of the planet in drought, by intensity, 1982-2012. The graph comes from a paper in a new Nature publication called Scientific Data and is open access.

So, again, the California wildfires are bad. But from a historical perspective, the world is not in a drought infested state, the historical data shows that if anything, drought situations are slowly decreasing over time, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates would tell us.So if the long term trend for drought and wildfires is down as measured by real data, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates measure by real hysteria, what could possibly be going on in California to fuel these current fires?Consider a recent Forbes article from November 16, 2018 by Chuck DeVore, Texas Public Policy Foundation VP and former California legislator. The title of his article is, “California's Deadliest Fires Could Have Been Mitigated By Prevention.” Given his background as a California politician, and years spent with the state’s National Guard fighting disasters, he does have some credibility about talking about his current state’s situation:

• He starts off the article by recognizing how bad the situation is: “At least 63 people have been killed with 631 reported missing in the California fires as thousands of firefighters, including 200 sent from Texas as well as other states, battle to contain the blazes. More than 7,000 structures have been destroyed, including up to 90 percent of the homes in Paradise, population 26,682, in Northern California’s Butte County. More than a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in both the north of the state by the Camp Fire and by other fires in Southern California, Hill and Woolsey.”
• Given his first hand experience, it is his experienced opinion that political policy bears at least some of the blame for these massive fires.
• He cites the opinion of Mike Marcucci, the assistant chief of CAL FIRE, California’s main firefighting agency, who in a recent interview blamed decades of political policy of discouraging controlled burns as a safety precaution to reduce the natural wood fuel that feeds massive wildfires.
• These needed burns were decreased as a result of environmental lawsuits and the fear of air quality degradation, a concern that has certainly backfired big time with the air degradation caused by these wildfires which have been many times greater than what would have happened under much smaller, controlled burns.
• Real data show that in the three decades before 1990, lumber companies annually took out 10-12 billion board feet of lumber from our national forests, much of which is located in California.
• By 2013, environmental policies had reduced that annual forest thinning down to a meager 2.5 billion board feet.
• Concurrent with that reduction, the thinning of underbrush and dead trees also declined dramatically.
• According to the article, the following simple truth is that, “Harvesting trees on public land is controversial but helps pay for needed brush clearing. Many environmental groups vigorously oppose both. But fighting the larger, hotter fires that result without active forest management is even more costly and threatens lives.”
• California, and its much tighter environmental controls and higher and higher prices for forest harvesting permits, has cut employment in the lumber industry by half since the 1990s, and with that has led to the overgrowth of the forests in the state.
• Of course, global warming advocates like California governor Jerry Brown ignored all of this reality when he blamed the fires on, no surprise, global warming, “During this summer’s fires, outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown blamed the record-breaking fires on climate change. In a press conference he warned that the level of climate change-induced forest fires predicted in 20 to 30 years were “now occurring in real time.””

It is tragically ironic that the zeal of environmentalists and global warming advocates along with stupid political and environmental policies have likely resulted in the intensity and death and destruction of these recent fires. These current wildfires have likely given off 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, about 12% of the state’s entire annual emissions in addition to creating incredibly bad air quality, the exact opposite of what environmentalists advocate for. As we said above, one data point, the current fires, do not represent a trend. But leaving behind billions and billions of lumber board feet not harvested along with the ever growing underbrush and dead trees that go with it, is a trend that has resulted in the current wildfire situation in the state, not global warming.2) When Trump recently suggested that bad environmental policies had contributed mightily to the current California wildfires, Governor Jerry Brown pooh poohed the idea since he is one of the biggest global warming advocates around, data, science, and reality be damned. But after the camera and news crews left the area after Trump’s visit and Brown’s retort, something curious happened:

• According to Emily Zanotti, writing for the Daily Wire on November 19, 2018, Brown quietly starting urging California politicians to undo some of the environmental legislation that so greatly reduced logging in the state and created the current combustible disaster that exists today in the state’s forests.
• In fact, he is not suggesting minor tweeks, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper, some of his proposed changes are the most significant changes in the state’s logging industry in almost 50 years: "Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing broad new changes to California's logging rules that would allow landowners to cut larger trees and build temporary roads without obtaining a permit as a way to thin more forests across the state." 
• Specifically: "Under Brown's proposal, private landowners would be able to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter - up from the current 26 inches - on property 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit from the state, as long as their purpose was to thin forests to reduce fire risk. They also would be able to build roads of up to 600 feet long without getting a permit, as long as they repaired and replanted them." 

So Trump gets crucified by global warming advocates for suggesting the need for more forest pruning and better forest management. But when one of the global warming heroes, Brown, proposes the same thing, crickets from the global warming crowd. The hypocrisy is deafening.To the man made global warming/climate change advocates, please stop knee jerking. Look at data, look at history, be logical and not hysterical and maybe then we can all have a mature, adult, reality based discussion on climate. Until then, I will continue to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2018, Part 3, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science: How Science Continues To Dispel The Global Warming Myth

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) The most important reason why we should not take people like Al Gore and his ilk seriously is that they have always been wrong. Over the past two decades global warming advocates have forecasted major, extensive climate disasters. Al Gore even predicted that there would be an excellent chance that within five years the North Pole ice cap would be totally melted. Those five years expired about four years ago and the ice cap is still there and still very cold, as witnessed by the recent arctic weather. 

Other forecasts predicted that coastal city streets would be flooded by the melting ice caps (they are not), that the number and severity of hurricanes would increase significantly (they have not), etc. But none of that happened and there is a good reason for that: the warming trend unexpectedly stopped about twenty years, a reality that every global warming scientist and forecast model totally and embarrassingly never saw coming:

• According to an article on the Conservative Tribune website on September 17, 2017 by John Falkenberg, real scientists compared actual, real Earth temperatures over the past 15 years and compared the realities to the predicted temperatures form the major global warming forecast models.
• What they found is that the Earth’s temperature basically stopped rising after the year 2000, contrary to everything Al Gore told us would happen, severely crippling his and other global warming advocates’ credibility.
• The study results were published in the publication nature Geoscience.
• The study results came about as researchers analyzed satellite data over the years.
• Michael Grubb, a professor of international energy and climate change at University College London, an original global warming advocate and scientist, and one of the authors of the study, even admitted that his initial belief in man made global warming was wrong: “When the facts change, I change my mind, as (John Maynard) Keynes said.” 
• Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, and another author of the study: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”
• A previous article in Nature Geoscience in May, 2017 came to the same conclusion: “In the early twenty-first century, satellite-derived tropospheric warming trends were generally smaller than trends estimated from a large multi-model ensemble.”

Real scientists looking at realdata to prove that manmade global warming forecasts were REALLY bad, REALLY wrong, and REALLY useless. And still, non-scientists like Al Gore continue to try to contort, manipulate, and deny that they were wrong and that it is highly likely that manmade global warming is a myth.

2) Let’s continue looking at real climate data via a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on January 13, 2018 by Benny Peiser and Matt Ridley:

• Although the U.S. got hit with some really bad weather in 2017, e.g. Hurricane Irma, leading global warming advocates hysterically like to claim that this is what happens when manmade global warming occurs, from a total Earth perspective, 2017 was a very calm climate and weather year.
• On average, the Earth experiences 325 catastrophic natural disasters annually but through November of 2017 only about 250 occured, about 25% below normal, something that global warming advocates would not expect or predict.
• These real numbers come from research done by the Centre For Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
• Not only were there about 25% fewer natural disasters last year but one third fewer people died on average as a result of them.
• Although a lot of record high temperatures were set around the world the past three years, much of that was due to a huge El Nino warm weather cycle that had established itself in the Pacific Ocean.
• As the El Nino dissipated so did the high temperatures and with the weather cycle gone, temperatures have returned to pre El Nino levels.
• Now, although global warming advocates could make a case that man made global warming caused the higher than average intensity of the El Nino, they never predicted that situation, further damaging their credibility that they understand climate and according to historical records, there have similar intense El Ninos throughout history, long before Al Gore claims that manmade global warming started. You cannot say "I told you so" after the fact.
• Back in 1990, the global warming advocates predicted that the Earth’s average temperature would rise 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit but it has risen only a fraction of that forecast and since 2000 has risen very little if at all.
• When Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast in 2017, it ended a 12 year period with no major hurricane hitting the U.S., a drought of major hurricanes that was not supposed to happen according to manmade global warming forecasts and hysteria.
• In fact, global hurricane/cyclone activity as measured by the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index, which combines intensity and number of hurricanes, is running at about 20% below its long term average. 
• In 2017, that index was at less than half of its long term average for the Southern hemisphere.
• Although California suffered through some terrible wildfires in 2017, long term, the trend of wildfires is down, contrary to global warming advocates’ predictions.
• According to expert Jon Kelley at UCLA, the number of wildfires has been trending down for forty years.
• In 2016, the Britain's Royal Society showed research that the global area burned by wildfires has also trended downwards over the past few decades.
• From a drought perspective, data compiled by the scientific journal, Science, found that the the proportion of the world suffering from lower than average rainfall is down slightly since the 1980s, something that should not have happened according to global warming advocates since manmade global warming should have parched a lot more of the Earth.
• A 2017 study published by Glenn. Hodges of the U.S. Geological Society found that the number of major floods in Europe and the U.S. has not increased in 80 years while worldwide flooding instances have decreased over time.
• While global warming advocates have forecasted that Asia's monsoon seasons would get dryer and dryer over time, inreality, according to a study by MIT scientists Qinjian Jin and Chien Wang, monsoons have actually gotten stronger over the past 15 years and since the 2012 monsoon season, monsoon has increased significantly.
• Since the most recent El Nino ended, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Center reports that the North and South poles have recovered almost all of their shrunken ice volume, increasing to 21.2 million square kilometers, up from 19. 65 square kilometers in just a few years.
• The Center does report that while the South Pole has been adding ice coverage over the years, the North Pole has been losing ice coverage but that the North Pole ice erosion has been so small that it has had no effect on sea levels.
• And finally, according to NASA, global sea levels have hardly changed at all since 2015, not a situation predicted by global warming models.
• The rise since 1998 has been 3.2 millimeters per year but the rate has not accelerated over time despite predictions by global warming advocates and as we just said, the rise has stopped since 2015.
• And even if the 3.2 rate should start again, that would result in only a one foot rise over the next 100 years, more than enough cushion to fix shore lines if needed.

A great article featuring real data from real research from real scientists and scientific institutions. So who do you believe: these scientific results or former politician Al Gore? More realities that reinforce my stance that I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Stupid Water Idea From California, Stupid Wage Idea From Seattle,and Stupid Syria PLans From the White House

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) California has been suffering through an epic drought for a number of years now. I will not talk about what caused the drought today, although many feel it was the ineptness of the California political class on a number of fronts that at least made the water shortage far worse, if not caused it, to begin with.

Today’s water shortage insanity comes from an LA area Congresswoman who thinks she has a solution to the drought. Her idea is to ship water from Alaska to the LA port for use by California water users. Congresswoman Janice Hahn wants to ship water from the Blue Sitka lake in Alaska via ships. Back in the 1960s there was a proposal to build a pipeline to move the water to California but it was never built.

On first glance there is a big problem with the Congresswoman’s. Even if the Congresswoman can get the water to the LA port, there is no infrastructure or pipeline to transport it. No problem, Hahn’s concept is to put the water in giant plastic bags that would then be put into shipping containers. 

But the problems do not end there. Even if the water could be gathered, put into plastic bags and somehow delivered hundreds of miles, across land and water, to California water users, the cost would be about 12 times the cost of water California users are paying today.

And the final piece of insanity in this watery problem:

• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2010 California users consumed 38 billion gallons of water every day.
• Wikipedia estimates that the average oil tanker can hold 2 million barrels of oil or 84 million gallons.
• Thus, if California used oil supertankers to transport that Alaskan water, it would take 45 supertankers a DAY to supply just 10% of that 38 million gallons of water used everyday.

Thus, her solution is one of impossible logistics, high costs, and numbers that simply do not add up. Typical non-solution from the American political class.

2) Many politicians incorrectly think that significantly raising the minimum wage is a good idea. We have already discussed the reality that this is not a good idea in previous posts with the most obvious outcome is that higher wages depress job growth. Businesses generally have fixed or semi-fixed budgets for salaries and forcing businesses to increase how much they pay their employees reduces the number of employees that the business can carry.

That is exactly what is happening in the Seattle metro area which has decided that substantially raising the minimum wage is a good idea:

• An analysis from the American Enterprise Institute, using metro level Census data, found that the Seattle Metropolitan Statistical Area lost 700 restaurant jobs in the first three quarters of 2015.
• In the rest of the state of Washington, where the minimum wage was not raised significantly if at all, 5,800 restaurant jobs were added to the state economy.
• Over the past three years, prior to the minimum wage increase, the Seattle metro area averaged the creation of 4,000 restaurant jobs a year in the first three quarters each year.
• Overall job growth in the Seattle has been positive despite the loss of the 700 restaurant jobs.

Now, these coincidences, while they imply a high degree of correlation, they do not necessarily prove that higher minimum wages depressed job growth. But, logically and these “coincidences”, along with elementary economic theory proves that many politicians have no idea what they are doing when it comes in their dabbling in the economy. The insanity is that they continue to think they are economic wizards.

3) More than a few times we have shown that President Obama has lied and deceived the American public dozens of times on various topics during his tenure in the White House. Many of us that have followed his pathological lying now assume that any public pronouncement he makes is false until proven true.

The position’s validity has been proven again with a recent article in USAToday on October 31, 2015 by Gregory Korte. For those of you who did not get the news, the President recently announced that he would be deploying 50 U.S. special forces ground troops into Syria itself. One would say that as commander-in-chief he has the prerogative to protect Americans and American interests.

Which is a true statement but for the past few years, according to the article, he has told us over and over and over (at least 16 times) that he would never put U.S. troops “boots on the ground” in Syria (my emphasis added below):

August. 30, 2013: "In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign. But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria, but others around the world, understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm. So again, I repeat, we're not considering any open-ended commitment. We're not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach."

August 31, 2013 - "After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope."

September 3, 2013: "So the key point that I want to emphasize to the American people: The military plan that has been developed by our Joint Chiefs — and that I believe is appropriate — is proportional. It is limited. It does not involve boots on the ground. This is not Iraq, and this is not Afghanistan."

September 4, 2013: "I think America recognizes that, as difficult as it is to take any military action — even one as limited as we're talking about, even one without boots on the ground — that's a sober decision."

September 6, 2013: "The question for the American people is, is that responsibility that we'll be willing to bear? And I believe that when you have a limited, proportional strike like this — not Iraq, not putting boots on the ground; not some long, drawn-out affair; not without any risks, but with manageable risks — that we should be willing to bear that responsibility."

September 7, 2013: "What we're not talking about is an open-ended intervention. This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan. There would be no American boots on the ground. Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope, designed to deter the Syrian Government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so."

September. 9, 2013: "Tomorrow I'll speak to the American people. I'll explain this is not Iraq; this is not Afghanistan; this is not even Libya. We're not talking about — not boots on the ground. We're not talking about sustained airstrikes. We're talking about a very specific set of strikes to degrade his chemical weapons capabilities in terms of delivery."

September 9, 2013: "What I'm going to try to propose is that we have a very specific objective, a very narrow military option, and one that will not lead into some large-scale invasion of Syria or involvement or boots on the ground; nothing like that. This isn't like Iraq. It's not like Afghanistan. It's not even like Libya. Then hopefully people will recognize why I think this is so important."

September 10, 2013: "Many of you have asked, won't this put us on a slippery slope to another war? One man wrote to me that we are 'still recovering from our involvement in Iraq.' A veteran put it more bluntly: 'This nation is sick and tired of war.' My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's capabilities."

February, 27, 2014: "We are doing everything we can to see how we can do that and how we can resource it. But I've looked at a whole lot of game plans, a whole lot of war plans, a whole bunch of scenarios, and nobody has been able to persuade me that us taking large-scale military action even absent boots on the ground, would actually solve the problem."

September 5, 2014: "With respect to the situation on the ground in Syria, we will not be placing U.S. ground troops to try to control the areas that are part of the conflict inside of Syria. I don't think that's necessary for us to accomplish our goal. We are going to have to find effective partners on the ground to push back against ISIL."

September 7, 2014: "(You) cannot, over the long term or even the medium term, deal with this problem by having the United States serially occupy various countries all around the Middle East. We don't have the resources. It puts enormous strains on our military. And at some point, we leave. And then things blow up again. So we've got to have a more sustainable strategy, which means the boots on the ground have to be Iraqi. And in Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian. ... I will reserve the right to always protect the American people and go after folks who are trying to hurt us wherever they are. But in terms of controlling territory, we're going to have to develop a moderate Sunni opposition that can control territory and that we can work with. The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that."

September 10, 2014: "I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground."

November 16, 2014: "Yes, there are always circumstances in which the United States might need to deploy U.S. ground troops. If we discovered that ISIL had gotten possession of a nuclear weapon, and we had to run an operation to get it out of their hands, then, yes, you can anticipate that not only would Chairman Dempsey recommend me sending U.S. ground troops to get that weapon out of their hands, but I would order it. So the question just ends up being, what are those circumstances? I'm not going speculate on those. Right now we're moving forward in conjunction with outstanding allies like Australia in training Iraqi security forces to do their job on the ground."

February 11, 2015: "The resolution we've submitted today does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria. It is not the authorization of another ground war, like Afghanistan or Iraq. ... As I've said before, I'm convinced that the United States should not get dragged back into another prolonged ground war in the Middle East. That's not in our national security interest, and it's not necessary for us to defeat ISIL. Local forces on the ground who know their countries best are best positioned to take the ground fight to ISIL, and that's what they're doing."

July 6, 2015: "There are no current plans to do so. That's not something that we currently discussed. I've always said that I'm going to do what's necessary to protect the homeland. One of the principles that we all agree on, though, and I pressed folks pretty hard because in these conversations with my military advisers I want to make sure I'm getting blunt and unadulterated, uncensored advice. But in every one of the conversations that we've had, the strong consensus is that in order for us to succeed long-term in this fight against ISIL, we have to develop local security forces that can sustain progress. It is not enough for us to simply send in American troops to temporarily set back organizations like ISIL, but to then, as soon as we leave, see that void filled once again with extremists."

Sixteen times Obama said he would not deploy American ground forces within the country of Syria. He made these strong pronouncements within the United States and in foreign countries. He made them publicly to American press people and to foreign press people and foreign leaders.

And yet he has done the exact opposite of what he told us sixteen times, in no uncertain terms, what he would not do. Why would anyone believe anything he says on any topic when after sixteen times in this situation he does a complete reversal of what he said he would not do? Complete insanity to believe anything this man says.

And even worse insanity, what in the world are deploying 50 ground troops into the hellhole that is Syria going to accomplish from a military perspective? Thus, he killed his credibility even further with what appears to be a stupid military strategy. You cannot make this stuff up, it is that inane.

More insanity tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2014, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science:Damn Beaver Dams,The California Drought, and Climate Predictions That Went Wrong

Several years ago we decided to look into the popular craze at that time that the world was warming and global warming was going to wipe out humanity. Rather than just assume that global warming advocates like Al Gore were correct, we wanted to look at ALL of the science, ALL of the climate data, and All of the realities of global warming.

And to be perfectly honest, we were tired of Al Gore, Barack Obama and other global warming advocates yelling at global warming doubters like myself, calling us racists, homophobes, flat earth believers, etc. In order to have a mature, adult conversation about global warming, we felt it was necessary to treat those with a different opinion with respect not derision and that to get to an adult solution, all of the science should be included in the debate.

Over the years, however, we have put together a very strong case that man made global warming and its rebranded marketing theme, climate change, were indeed mostly a false position, a travesty of science. Those who believed in global warming ignored or failed to consider scientific findings and research that was contrary to their views. 

They were found to have suppressed or changed raw data and findings that did not support their global warming positions. In short, they were the ones that had shortchanged the scientific method, not the doubters.

To review our past reviews of the global warming fallacy, type in the phrase, “I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. Over the next few days we will continue to look at the latest climate data and realities and again prove that being a global warming doubter is a position that is strongly supported by science and not Al Gore hysterics.

1) One trait that makes global warming and climate change advocates look so foolish and weakens their credibility is their tendency to associate some very stupid factors with global warming. For example, last month we reviewed the ridiculous assertion that Halloween candy was contributing to global warming. 

Apparently, palm oil is used in some types of Halloween candy and by celebrating Halloween we are reducing the number of palm trees in the world which is contributing to global warming. The advocates of this position did not mention that the new coal burning plants that China and India are opening up on an almost weekly basis might be having a tad more impact on the Earth’s temperatures than Halloween candy.

We recently came across an equally inane assertion, namely that increase methane production caused by beaver created dams was causing climate change. Really, beaver dams? According to a recent article in the International Business Times:

• The theory is that methane that’s generated at the bottom of standing water ponds created by beaver dams ends up being released into the atmosphere and creating unwanted climate changes.
• The scientists making this tie-in to global warming and climate change even estimated that beaver created ponds are adding an 800 million kg of methane to the atmosphere every year.
• I am not a scientists but if we divide the 800 million kg estimate by 365 days a year, then beaver ponds by themselves are adding an astounding five million pounds of methane to the atmosphere every day. Sounds a little impossible to a non-scientist like me.
• According to the article, over the past hundred years there has been a conservation effort to save and enlarge the beaver population in the wild and this successful conservation effort is now contributing to global warming and climate change.
• Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada estimated methane released from these beaver ponds is now 200 times higher than it was a century ago.

Really, beavers are significant culprits in global warming and climate change? This analysis and assertion omits two important realities:

1. If global warming is indeed a major problem, shouldn’t we be more worried about what we discussed above, the hundreds and hundreds of coal burning power plants that have been built and are now being built or planned in countries like India and China? Aren’t they far more lethal than….beaver dams?
2. And if beaver ponds and dams have been growing over the past hundred years, why has global warming stopped about 18 years ago? Either beavers and their dams are not big factors in global warming, since the global warming trend has stopped long ago, or the growth in beaver dams and ponds stopped about 18 years ago, a highly doubtful situation.

It is tough to take global warming advocates seriously when Halloween candy and beaver dams are considered important components of their failing climate theory.

2) Julia A. Seymour, writing for the website www.mrc.org, on December 10, 2014 reviewed recent scientific data and analyses that concluded that “natural cycles” were blamed for the current California drought and that climate change was not the culprit in the drought.

This conclusion was reached by a team of Federal government scientists who studied California’s multi-year drought. The researchers determined “natural cycles” and “sea surface temperatures” were “main drivers” of the California water shortage and drought: "It's important to note that California's drought, while extreme, is not an uncommon occurrence for the state. In fact, multi-year droughts appear regularly in the state's climate record, and it's a safe bet that a similar event will happen again. Thus, preparedness is key," said Richard Seager, the lead author and professor with Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

The research was enough for the global warming advocate New York Times to report on the findings (but buried deeply inside the paper on page A23 in its December 9, edition): “Scientists who have analyzed California’s extreme drought have concluded that it is a result of natural climate variability over the past three years and that climate change caused by humans has played little role.”

Government meteorologist Marty Hoerling was also quoted in another Times article, saying the California drought “resembles the droughts that afflicted the state in 1976 and 1977,” a period before man made global warming and climate change became a popular theory. 

Who is right? These government scientists and other scientists whose scientific work has cast considerable doubt on global warming and climate change theories or the handpicked scientists who Al Gore advocates for, some of whom were critical of this California study? I cannot choose a side since I am not a climate scientists. 

However, I am smart to know that there is enough science on the side of global warming doubters to merit an adult conversation about the whole issue, a conversation that will never happen as long as Al Gore types choose to berate those that disagree with him and who ignore science that does not fit their preconceived opinions.

3) We will finish today’s discussion on global warming doubters by reviewing some recent material that was published on Cato’s website on December 8, 2014. In their “Friday Funny” feature, they took a look at some historical climate and global warming predictions that Tom Scott had put up on the “Watts Up With That” blog. 

As you read them, keep in mind that when these predictions were espoused, they were taken as seriously in their day as Al Gore wants us to accept his predictions today. Given how wrong these historical predictions turned out, it makes one stop and wonder if Al Gore-type predictions are just as wild and just as likely to prove to be terribly wrong:

- “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” -Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September, 1971. At last look, 43 years later, England’s coast line as about where it was back in 1971 and most of the current inhabitants are not hungry.

- “Some predictions for the next decade (1990’s) are not difficult to make… Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.” -Dallas Morning News December 5, 1989. The Sun Belt migration has continued unabated since 1989, with the Sun Belt states seeing steady population growth and picking up dozens of Congressional delegates to the detriment of northern states.

“Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert – Huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20 to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected “greenhouse effect,” scientists believe.” Denver Post, April 18, 1990. Twenty four years later, right smack in the middle of the 20 to 25 years predicted time frame, there are no giant sand dunes, the plains are anything close to being a desert, based on the polar vortex from last winter, and temperatures stopped rising about 18 years ago.

Strike one, strike two, strike three, three serious predictions that came nowhere close to being true. If global warming theories and forecasts were so wrong decades ago, why should we believe non-scientists like Al Gore, Barack Obama, and others when it comes to the equally wild climate predictions of today? 

Especially when government and non-government scientists continue to prove every month that man made global warming and climate change may be as much as a mirage as these three predictions turned out to be. More global warming doubting material tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w