Saturday, March 20, 2010
Inhofe: Al Gore, Global Warming Alarmists Running for Cover After Climategate
Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62YxMt5VKV4&feature=player_embedded
Rewriting the decline
The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they can’t be adjusted. Jo Nova has a great summary of some recent work from occasional WUWT contributor Frank Lansner who runs the blog “Hide the Decline” and what he found in an old National Geographic, which bears repeating here. – Anthony
Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?
Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70’s, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. It’s a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is.
The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5°C.
But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5°C had become just a drop of 0.15°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone.
Maybe they had good reasons for making these adjustments. But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.
Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976
Now compare the 1935-1975 decline for the same area – the entire Northern hemisphere – presented by CRU/Brohan 2006:
Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUGNS_3plots.gif
And when the old and the new are overlaid…hey where’s the decline?
Above: The blue line is the adjusted CRU average from 2006, overlaid on the 1976 Nat Geo graph.
If temperature sets across the northern hemisphere were really showing that 1940 was as hot as 2000, that makes it hard to argue that the global warming that occurred from 1975 to 2000 was almost solely due to carbon, since it wasn’t unusual (at least not for half the globe), and didn’t correlate at all with our carbon emissions, the vast majority of which occurred after 1945.
The US records show that the 1930’s were as hot as the 1990’s. And the divergence problem in tree rings is well known. Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc? Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records?
Esper – Tree ring widths declined from 1940-1975. Records after 1960 are sometimes ignored because they don’t fit the “temperature record”. (All timeseries were normalized over the 1881–1940 period. RCS, regional curve standardization; TRW, tree-ring width.) Thanks to ClimateAudit. (Link below) Steven McIntyre discusses the Esper data here.
Frank Lansner also discusses the data from Scandinavia, which originally showed that temperatures were roughly level from mid-century to the end of the century, but that the large decline from 1940 to 1975 was…adjusted out of existence. (My post on that here).
Scandinavian Temperatures: 25 data series combined from The Nordklim database (left), compared to the IPCC’s temperature graph for the area. Frank points out that while the older graph is not peer reviewed, the modern data sets are also not peer reviewed, so even if the papers they are published in are peer reviewed, it’s meaningless to claim this is significant when the underlying data can be adjusted years after its collection without documentation or review.
The CRU has an FAQ on their datasets, and it includes this comment on the accuracy of the hemispheric records:
In the hemispheric files averages are now given to a precision of three decimal places to enable seasonal values to be calculated to ±0.01°C. The extra precision implies no greater accuracy than two decimal places.
Do I read that correctly? After an adjustment that may be in the order of 0.34°C, the accuracy is ±0.01°C?
At the time when there was a Global Ice Age Scare, this graph appeared in Newsweek.
Newsweek: Global Temperatures 1880-1970 (NCAR) Either 70% of the decline has been hidden in the years since then, or the climate scientists at the time were exaggerating the decline in order to support the Ice Age Scare (surely not!).
Full references available on Frank Lansner’s & Nicolai Skjoldby’s Blog. Stanley is derived from an NAS document. Mathews from National Geographic.
Thanks to Frank for his good work.
General Excise Tax Increase Will Stall Any Hope of Economic Recovery
On Tuesday, two key Senate committees passed out legislation that will stall Hawai‘i's hope of near-term economic recovery.
The Committee on Economic Development & Technology (EDT) and the Committee on Commerce & Consumer Protection (CPN) replaced a tax measure intended to reduce decades-old tax breaks for certain special interests, in favor of a 25 percent hike in the state general excise tax (GET) paid by every resident and business in Hawai‘i.
The proposed tax hike is one of the largest increases in state history. Raising the state GET from 4 percent to 5 percent – a 25 percent increase – will significantly impede Hawai‘i's economic recovery because of the GET's broad reach. In a nutshell, this proposed tax increase will remove roughly $500 million from Hawai‘i's economy every year. As the saying goes, the GET taxes "anything that moves" — including rent, food, clothing, gas, non-prescription medicine and doctor visits.
THE GET IS TOO REGRESSIVE AND THE EARNED INCOME CREDIT WON'T HELP MOST
The Senate committees really missed the mark. The GET is the most regressive form of tax imaginable. The tax impacts the poor more than the wealthy as a percentage of income. The poor, who have the least ability to pay the taxes on ordinary daily transactions and have to spend nearly all of their funds to survive, will be hit hardest by this tax increase. All of us will be hit by this tax increase, but the poor are the most vulnerable.
All businesses in Hawai‘i will also feel the impact as they purchase goods, services, and rent If the 25% GET increase is passed, sales will slow, consumers will pay more and more jobs will be lost.
The Senate committees attempted to dampen the impact of this record-setting tax hike by proposing an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). What the committees don't understand is that the EITC is anything but a panacea for tax relief for the truly poor. The EITC is riddled with problems, complexity, and abuse by taxpayers and tax professionals.
The EITC is also counterproductive in the sense that it only rewards the poor who actually work and have multiple children. If you are out-of-work, don’t have enough kids, or work too much, you get nothing. For example, a family of four filing jointly that earns just over $45,000 is entitled to no EITC; or a married couple with no dependent children earning roughly $18,500 gets no EITC.
Even in today's economy, the phase out amounts for the EITC are very low, which means a vast majority of Hawai‘i families struggling daily will be hit by this 25 percent GET increase with no relief. And for those out-of-work who have no earned income, they will also get no relief from the GET tax hike.
SPECIAL INTEREST HAS HAD A FREE RIDE FOR TOO LONG
The Senate committees’ move to leave untouched certain decades-old special interests in favor of increasing the tax upon all Hawai‘i taxpayers will not have the positive effect on the economy, as they assume. The Senate committees assume that by increasing the tax on all of us, including all businesses, the economy will not be impacted. However, quite the contrary will occur.
The Senate committees' proposal to increase the GET by 25% effectively increases the cost of living and doing business in Hawai‘i. The GET increase will result in more expensive rent and more expensive equipment and supplies, all the things necessary and essential to run a business. As a result, businesses will have fewer funds to hire, re-hire, or retain workers. Roughly $500 million will be pulled out of the economy, which means less revenue in small business coffers, less money in peoples’ pockets, and less jobs for Hawai‘i residents. The Senate committees did Hawai‘i’s business climate no favors by increasing the rate for all businesses.
THE BUDGET IS BALANCED WITHOUT AN ACROSS-THE-BOARD GET HIKE
Lastly, the Senate committees passed the GET increase under the pretext that it was necessary to balance the budget. The proposal to hike the GET wasn’t necessary. The Lingle-Aiona Administration proposed a balanced budget that didn't include an across-the-board GET increase.
For the past year, the Lingle-Aiona Administration has been working vigorously to spur Hawai‘i’s economic recovery. The economy is in a delicate stage where the recovery cycle is near. By hitting all Hawai‘i taxpayers and all Hawai‘i businesses with a 25 percent state GET tax increase, the Senate EDT and CPN Committees will effectively stall Hawai‘i's hope of rounding the corner in the near future.
The proposal to hike the GET will be vetoed, that much has been made clear by Governor Lingle.
Please encourage Senator Donna Mercado Kim, chair of the Ways & Means Committee, and other Senators to table this bill and consider more responsible approaches to balancing the budget that do not cause job loss and delay our economic recovery.
Kurt Kawafuchi is the Director of Taxation for the State of Hawai‘i
Hawaii Residents: Taxed to Death and After
On March 2, 2010 the Hawaii State House of Representatives passed House Bill 2866 HD1 which allows the State of Hawaii to collect the Estate Tax, or the Death Tax as it is more commonly known.
If approved, this bill will retroactively apply to the estate of any person that passed away in 2010. What this means is the state will tax at rates of up to 55% the assets of our residents life's work, and since it is being applied retroactively many of these people will never have had a chance to see it coming and prepare for it.
This tax unfairly punishes residents, like my parents, former plantation workers, who worked hard all their lives and saved to have something to pass on to their children and grandchildren. I am sure they never imagined that the government could swoop in and effectively claim half of the fruits of their life's work as their own, right off the top before anything is passed on to their family.
This legislation is especially brutal for those that have successfully built a small business that they want to pass on to the next generation of their family.
Consider the example of Joe who manages to get taxed three separate times due to the Death Tax.
Joe is an electrician who recently started his own business. He takes home earnings of roughly $60,000 per year. All of his income is subject to the income tax (1st tax layer).
Joe wants to improve his family’s standard of living, and so he is frugal and saves his money and invests it in diversified mutual funds. Over the course of his life, he invests $500,000 of his income, where it grows to over $1,000,000. Upon selling his stock, Joe owes capital gains taxes on the profit above his original $500,000 (2nd tax layer).
Joe dies after enjoying a good life and nice retirement. Joe leaves his investment returns – along with his house, boat, and other belongings – as an inheritance for his son and daughter. Joe’s business, savings, and other belongings are valued at $7 million. Any inheritance that he leaves in excess of $3.5 million (if he is single) is subject to the Death Tax (3rd tax).
Joe has been taxed three separate times on the same dollar: once when he earned it, again when he invested it and later sold the investment, and again when he died. Is it right for the government to nail Joe three separate times on the same dollar? Shouldn’t Joe pay taxes once and then be done with his obligations to the taxman? When a loved one dies families are often forced to sell off the very business that their loved ones put their heart and soul into building to pay the death tax being assessed by the government. Simply put this practice is cruel and wrong.
The Death Tax mocks the idea of fundamental property rights. It confiscates life-earnings and prevents families from passing a legacy of hard-work and delayed gratification down to the next generation.
The Death Tax is a form of double taxation, which means that it taxes assets which have already been subject to the payroll, income and/or capital gains taxes. The Death Tax is an additional burden on top of other taxes. Every time you receive a paycheck taxes are taken out by the government. If all you ever do is cash that check and put it in the bank, when you pass away, under HB 2866, the government of the State of Hawaii is going to tax it again.
Economist Art Laffer aptly described the perverse incentives of the Death Tax in a recent Wall Street Journal article: “Today in America you can take your after-tax income and go to Las Vegas and carouse, gamble, drink and smoke, and as far as our government is concerned that's just fine. But if you take that same after-tax income and leave it to your children and grandchildren, the government will tax that after-tax income one additional time."
It's not too late to prevent this terrible tax from devastating the life's work of countless Hawaii residents. The bill is in the State Senate right now and your testimony could prevent it from becoming law.
I urge each of you to contact the state senators by emailing sens@capitol.hawaii.gov any message sent to this address will be delivered to all 25 members of the state senate. If you would like to view my floor speech against this legislation visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF8VkLTVf9A
Darfur aid dollars funding West Bank settlements
ASMARA, Eritrea -- Persons working with aid organizations assisting the victims of the Darfur conflict have passed on the news that they have confirmed through their contacts in the so called “Save Darfur Coalition” that millions of dollars raised to help the Darfur refugees have ended up in Israeli bank accounts. These accounts help fund programs that include illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
These sources inside the pro-Israel organizations that control the “Save Darfur Coalition” estimate that over $100 million was raised for Darfur, though the exact amount may never be known due to the murky nature of the financial statements these organizations submit. What is known is that over half the money raised for Darfur was consumed by “operational expenses” for these organizations, meaning bloated salaries, expense accounts and the multimillion dollar publicity campaign that helped generate the donations. Only about 10 percent of the donations received ever made it to the Darfur refugees, with several million ending up in Israeli bank accounts.
The Darfur funds were diverted to Israel by either co-mingling the funds with those used to support the Israeli projects or through a more complex system of grants to other “aid” or “relief” organizations that allowed the eventual destination of the funds to be almost impossible to trace.
For some time now, aid workers in Darfur have been quietly pressuring the Save Darfur Coalition to turn over more of the tens of millions of dollars they have been collecting on the behalf of the Sudanese people in Darfur. People working inside the organizations that make up the coalition became upset when they discovered that aid raised on behalf of Darfur was being diverted to Israel and began supplying information to the aid workers on the ground in Darfur. Some of these aid workers finally broke their silence on the matter and passed on to us what they had confirmed from these Save Darfur insiders.
As previously reported, the so-called “Darfur Genocide” was a myth, or more accurately, a fraud, perpetuated by the Western media and governments along with the pro-Israel “human rights” NGOs to raise over a $100 million. UN and international aid workers involved in the Darfur relief effort are quietly proud of the fact that Darfur refugees are the beneficiaries of one of, if not the largest, best run relief works in history. These aid workers also acknowledge the fact that the Sudanese government played a critical role in support of the relief effort, which could not have succeeded without such support. It doesn’t add up that, on one hand, the Sudanese government was committing genocide against the people of Darfur while at the same time playing a critical role in operating the largest best run relief works in history in support of the Darfur people.
As previously reported, a Western funded genocide is being committed in the Ethiopian Ogaden by the Ethiopian government, but no genocide has ever been committed in Darfur. The whole “Darfur Genocide” campaign is nothing more than a smokescreen to vilify the Sudanese government in an attempt to promote Western military intervention in oil and mineral rich Sudan, Africa’s largest and potentially wealthiest country, as well as to help divert attention from the real, Western-funded genocide being carried out in the Ogaden by the Western cop on the beat in East Africa, Ethiopia.
The brazenness and breadth of this propaganda campaign has even surprised experienced observers of the long, dirty history of aid diversion in the Horn of Africa. Western governments, the UN, the Western media, even Hollywood became part of the act with story lines “exposing” the Darfur “genocide” appearing in dramas such as Boston Legal amongst others.
Bernie Maddoff went to prison for his fraud, but it is highly unlikely that an investigation will be launched into the “Darfur Genocide” scam. And only an investigation by the US Justice Department has the power to search, seize and subpoena that will be required to expose this whole criminal fraud.
So next time you hear about a campaign to “save” Africans be suspicious and remember just how big a lie was told about Darfur and how your hard earned money ended up somewhere you least expected, helping building Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Stay tuned to Online Journal for more news that the so-called Free Press in the West refuses to cover
Thomas C. Mountain was, in a former life, an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
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