The President of Big Media

There's no doubt that the so-called "Mainstream Media (MSM)" - newspapers, television, and to a lesser extent radio - were instrumental in ensuring the election of Candidate Barrack Hussein Obama as president of the United States. Suddenly, however, the MSM wants to distance itself from President Obama, as his actions and words cause concern not only among conservatives, but also among many of Obama's supposed partners in the Democratic Party. The newspapers are beginning to understand why it's not wise to elect a relative neophyte to such a high office, and are afraid the coming failures of the Obama Administration will implicate them.

It's too late. The MSM cannot escape the reality of its extremely partisan behavior toward Barrack Obama, no matter how they conduct themselves over the next few years.

The same is true of the mainstream portions of the Democratic Party. They, too, endorsed a candidate they knew little about to a position that is the ultimate in the demand of personal trust - and at least a LITTLE experience in making difficult decisions. The election of Barrack Obama has led to the destruction of institutional trust between the President, Congress, and the People.

Both the media and the Democrats failed to "vet" their candidate, and today we have a person with NO executive experience in the most strenuous and demanding executive position in the free world. We have a president that doesn't really understand (or seem to care about) science, economics, general law, personal freedom, national defense, human psychology, or institutional or personal integrity.

It's going to be a LONG four years, not only for our nation and its people, but for the MSM and the Democratic Party. The failures of the Republican Party may spell its doom. For the Democratic Party, it might be success that destroys it. Either way, the MSM will be forced to shoulder a huge portion of the blame.

We need to have a realistic debate on "climate change".

"Our" government is once again proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are few intelligent adults among its members. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to label carbon dioxide (CO2) a pollutant. If they succeed, perhaps we can convince all the employees of the EPA to stop breathing, since CO2 is a direct byproduct of that activity. In fact, a certain level of CO2 is ESSENTIAL to breathing, as its percentage of content in our lungs is what triggers exhaling.

CO2 is supposed to be causing runaway anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming. But there has been a net COOLING over the last ten years, even though CO2 levels continue to climb.

Man does belch a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere - but it only amounts to about 1.2% of the total atmospheric CO2. A little more than 55% of that is sequestered through various processes.

My chemistry and physics classes were long ago, but from recent readings has been somewhat refreshed. Accordingly, from what I've read various places, water vapor accounts for 95% of all greenhouse warming, with CO2 providing 4%, and all the rest of the greenhouse gasses making up the other >1%, dominated by methane (CH4).

Carbon dioxide, methane, sulfates (H2S, H2SO4, H2SO3), and in some cases aerosols (airborne particles) are constantly being emitted by volcanic action, among many other things. A large,lengthy volcanic eruption can put more of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a matter of days than human beings can do in a decade.

Before the EPA declares carbon dioxide or methane, both natural byproducts of natural processes, pollutants, there needs to be a very vigorous, very extensive debate. Sixty days isn't long enough to even build a bibliography of all the data collected in the last 50 years on Earth's climate, much less how and why it changes. We see "through a glass, darkly" only a portion of the variables that can - and do - have an impact on the climate of the Earth, nor how all the different variables interact.

We have a difficult time predicting the weather three days in advance, yet "computer models" claim to be able to predict what will happen a hundred years in the future.

Until we know how the climate (not weather) is probably going to react to interacting variables such as solar forcing, cosmic rays, sunspots, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, changes in the amount of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane in the atmosphere (both natural and anthropogenic), and dozens of other variables, making monumental decisions that will affect every person on the planet, based on partial and poorly-understood "evidence", may very well do far more damage than doing nothing.

Excuses, excuses

As anyone who reads my blog has noted, I haven't been very productive lately. There are many reasons for that, from health issues to household changes to being the day-to-day "father" to a four-year-old (difficult at 40, even harder now at 62). I hope to get back to posting on a regular basis, especially with the current political, economic, and cultural environment.