Source:  Telegraph of London

Why Barack Obama is the decline and despair president  

This week, The Hill newspaper published a poll that is dispiriting to anyone concerned about the future of America as the world’s leading power. It was one of the most damning yet, illustrating just how far most Americans believe their country has fallen in recent years. According to The Hill:

More than two-thirds of voters say the United States is declining, and a clear majority think the next generation will be worse off than this one, according to the results of a new poll commissioned by The Hill.

A resounding 69 percent of respondents said the country is “in decline,” the survey found, while 57 percent predict today’s kids won’t live better lives than their parents. Additionally, 83 percent of voters indicated they’re either very or somewhat worried about the future of the nation, with 49 percent saying they’re “very worried.”

The results suggest that Americans don’t view the country’s current economic and political troubles as temporary, but instead see them continuing for many years. (more…)

Source:  Climate Change Reconsidered

Planque et al. (2011) state that the “projection of future spatial distributions of marine populations is a central issue for ecologists and managers,” and they indicate that “the measure of projection uncertainty is particularly important, because projections can only be useful if they are given with a known and sufficiently high level of confidence.” In this regard, therefore, they list seven types of uncertainty that need to be addressed in making projections of spatial redistributions of marine species in response to changes in atmospheric composition (such as CO₂concentration) and climate (such as global warming). These uncertainties include those associated with (1) the observation process, (2 and 3) conceptual and numerical model formulations, (4) parameter estimates, (5) model evaluation, (6) appropriate consideration of spatial and temporal scales, and — perhaps most importantly of all — (7) the potential of adaptation of living systems. (more…)

Writing as background for their study, authors Wan et al. (2011) state that “the notorious tropical bias problem in climate simulations of global coupled general circulation models (e.g., Mechoso et al., 1995; Latif et al., 2001; Davey et al., 2002; Meehl et al., 2005) manifests itself particularly strongly in the tropical Atlantic,” and they say that “while progress towards reducing tropical climate biases has been made in the tropical Pacific over the past decades (e.g., Deser et al., 2006), little or no progress has been made in the tropical Atlantic (Breugem et al., 2006; Richter and Xie, 2008; Wahl et al., 2009).” In fact, they state that “the climate bias problem is still so severe that one of the most basic features of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean — the eastward shoaling thermocline — cannot be reproduced by most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (AR4) models,” citing Richter and Xie (2008). (more…)

As recounted by Beniston and Goyette (2007), “it has been assumed in numerous investigations related to climatic change that a warmer climate may also be a more variable climate (e.g., Katz and Brown, 1992; IPCC, 2001; Schar et al., 2004),” and in this regard they remark that “such statements are often supported by climate model results, as for example in the analysis of GCM and/or RCM simulated temperature and precipitation (Mearns et al., 1990, 1995) or in multiple-model simulations over Europe.” (more…)

Source: Washington Times

KAHLILI: Iran already has nuclear weapons

Western intelligence has known it for years

The pressure the United States and the West is bringing to bear on Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons is all for naught. Not only does the Islamic Republic already have nuclear weapons from the old Soviet Union, but it has enough enriched uranium for more. What’s worse, it has a delivery system.

The West for nearly a decade has worried about Iran’s uranium enhancement, believing Iran is working on a nuclear bomb, though the government maintains its uranium is only for peaceful purposes. (more…)

Source:  CNSNews

“Occupy Portland” protesters rally before marching through downtown Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Iranians demonstrated in Tehran on Wednesday in support of the Occupy Wall Street rallies in the United States, which some Iranian leaders are hoping will lead to the downfall of Western capitalism.

Iranian media outlets described the protesters as laborers and said they displayed banners “condemning the suppression of Occupy Wall Street movement and tyranny of Zionist and capitalist system.”

The demonstration was held in front of the Swiss Embassy, which represents U.S. interests in the absence of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran. (more…)

Opinion

An echo, not a choice: Mitt Romney shaping up as just another Barack Obama

By Tom Randall

Date: October 27, 2011

Barry Goldwater launched the modern conservative movement with his 1964 campaign against Lyndon Johnson and the Republican Establishment.  His campaign promise was, “A choice, not an echo”  — an appeal countering the fact that most Republicans of the day were merely pale versions of their Democrat opponents.  Goldwater lost that election.  However, at the convention that nominated him, a stirring speech drawing the sharp distinctions between American values and the false promises of the left was given by a man who would come to epitomize those values: Ronald Wilson Reagan.  Thus, the Reagan Revolution and the march of conservatism was begun.

Now, just when true American conservative values are once again on the march — this time directly from the the people themselves —  Republicans are being offered a leading presidential candidate who offers little choice from the current incumbent of that office.

By now, everyone knows that Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare law, with its insurance mandates was truly the model for Obamacare, a much reviled program which 58 percent of Americans have opposed from the start and still strongly want repealed.  Romney has now said he would repeal Obamacare if he is elected but does anyone believe he will really do away with what is, in fact, his brainchild?

Some see this as another of his many wishy-washy flip-flops, another of his attempts to say and do anything to get elected.

We think not.   (more…)

Source: Climatedepot

by Marc Morano

For more go to www.ClimateDepot.com — Check out the new Climate Depot Richard Muller page here & see here.]

Richard Muller Stands Accused by Climate Researcher : Muller ‘broke a confidentiality agreement…I’ve had it up to here with being lied to by Muller, I’m fed up with his tricks & his whoring for the media’

Climate researcher Willis Eschenbach Slams Muller: Muller ‘engages in shameless self-promotion…Sure, I could pretend Muller is an honest and honorable man like you recommend. But his actions have shown him to be a cunning snake’. (more…)

By S. Fred Singer     

Letter to WashPost  Oct 25, 2011**

Before you write off Bachmann, Cain, and Perry as cynical diehards, deniers, idiots, or whatever, [WashPost Oct 24] consider this:

Why are you surprised by the results of the Berkeley Climate Project?  They used data from the same weather stations as the Climategate people, but reported that one-third showed cooling — not warming.

They covered the same land area – less than 30% of the Earth’s surface – with recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in US and Western Europe.  They state that 70% of US stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is likely worse. (more…)

Source:  Washington Examiner

by Marc Morano

Source:  American Thinker

By Norman Rogers

Imagine that you are a climate scientist and the Earth is threatened with a climate disaster.  You need to warn the people of Earth and lobby Earth’s governments.  If you are tired of poring over boring computer printouts, you may be only too ready to accept this mission of transcendent importance.

On the other hand, maybe you have lost touch with reality.  Maybe you have become a true believer fighting a dubious battle.  Maybe you are Dr. James Hansen, high civil servant, recipient of cash awards from left-wing foundations, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  Hansen was arrested in front of the White House, dressed up to look like J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 1950s scientific martyr.  Hansen wants CEOs of energy companies to be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.” (more…)

Source:  Roger Pielke, Jr.

Why have a number of areas of US science become so politicized?

One answer to this question is that those concerned about science in politics have ceded discussion of issues of science policy to the most overtly partisan, many of whom see science as nothing more than a convenient tool to extract political advantage. This dynamic manifests itself in the overwhelming selectivity of attention among those who purport to be concerned about science in politics.

Consider a few examples: (more…)

Source:  Think Progress Green

By Bill McKibben

Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built. (more…)

Source:  FOX News

Several Republican lawmakers are challenging the Obama administration’s science czar over what they claim are repeat incidents of “scientific misconduct” among agencies, questioning whether officials who deal with everything from endangered species to nuclear waste are using “sound science.”

The letter sent Wednesday to John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited four specific controversies in recent years where scientific findings were questioned. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., rattled off a slew of questions on what they called “the apparent collapse in the quality of scientific work being conducted at our federal agencies.”  (more…)