Couldn’t Help But Notice (031307)

Consensus, Conschmensus Update — NY Times Notes Globaloney and Globalarmism Skeptics. Ace has a healthy portion of the text (probably requires free registration; HT Dan Riehl) for the inevitable disappearance behind the Times’ subscription firewall.

As Ace noted, they do try to water it down (the Times’ home page tease reads “Scientists argue that parts of Al Gore’s film may be exaggerated” — yeah, and I “may be” over 20 years old), but the strong criticism still seeps through:

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe’s recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

….. So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period. (question for NYT: How can the accepted earlier higher temperatures only “seem to contradict” his “highest in the past millennium” claim? — Ed.)

….. “Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog.

How “inconvenient” that the New York Times can’t even ignore the lack of “consensus.” There’s lots more at the Times link while it remains accessible, and at Ace’s place.

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Name a Country That Has Had 15 Years of Uninterrupted Economic Growth.

OK, probably both China and India.

But here is a surprise (to most people) member of that club: Australia, which is not only on track for Year 16 in 2007 — but is also in acceleration mode (requires free registration).

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Mark Tapscott is reporting that it “Looks Like Bush Has Caved on Earmarks”:

Now this morning, word is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data.

Seems the White House legislative staff fears releasing the database would offend members of the appropriation committees in Congress. So, the public gets the shaft, again, on a topic on which there is no doubt where the American people stand.

People want earmarks ended and Bush promised in his State of the Union address to join the campaign to abolish the key to what Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, calls the “gateway drug on federal spending addiction.”

If congresspersons don’t want their bleeping feelings hurt, they should get their snouts out of the trough. (Update, Mar. 14 — A Tapscott update at the same link indicates that the Office of Management and Budget is a willing accomplice in the coverup).

Given who is in control of Congress now, this is a bi-partisan outrage (you would think that since this relates to the FY 2005 budget, the Dems would want to deliver a deserved jab at those who were in charge in 2005, and would be raising a stink), especially, as Tapscott notes, during Sunshine Week.

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The German homeschooling/state kidnapping situation in Germany has taken a serious turn for the worse (HT WND, which also has a quick rundown of the story background for those who are new to it).