Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Washington is the mother of all hackers and cyber-warfare operations ~ “Your data is our data; your equipment is our equipment ­ anytime, anyplace, by any legal means.”


“Washington is the mother of all hackers and cyber-warfare operations.”
 See David Stockman's commentary below.

John Brennan, now there’s a name not mentioned very often by the main stream media, but me, I’ve mentioned the traitor more than once.  Ask the man on the street if they know who John Brennan is and more than likely they’ll have no idea.  In an earlier post in which I gave the title, “The Enemies Within”, there’s and article by Theodore’s World which for all practical purposes is one of the first public commentaries that reveal some of Brennan’s shenanigans while he filled the position of Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  Later in his role as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency we begin to wonder why he doesn’t seem to put America’s interest first and why is that, like Obama, he favors such organizations as CAIR (Counsel on American Islamic Relations), Hezbollah (a terrorist organization), and The Muslim Brotherhood (an Islamic organization who’s written charter states that they want to destroy Western ideology (hmm, you’re still not sure what Western ideology is, let me clue you in, that’s us…us as in U.S.).  I don’t want dwell too much time on Brennan but we should know that in his earlier years he was a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia and it is here that he converted to Islam.  Obama knew of this conversion and it’s the reason Obama selected him to do his dirty work.  Now in the following commentary (which agrees with all my previous documentation) the author writes without ever mentioning why Obama selected John Brennan and the others mentioned; his national security advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power.  The reason why?  They’re all traitors!  The reason I picked on Brennan rather than the others is; John Brennan...He's no ordinary traitor ...he speaks in accents familiar to his victims!
One more thing, I wished that Mr. Stockman would have left off the McCarthyite adjective describing the hysteria because McCarthy was right.  The political left (Communists) gave McCarthy a bad name and they kept repeating it over and over until generations believed it.
And if I could give Stockman a bit of advice when he writes about Obama’s underlings; don’t put all the blame on the peons; the guy in charge sets the agenda. The name Obama…and let’s not forget Hillary, should be in the title below…lock ‘em all up! ~ Norman E. Hooben
“…the heart of American democracy—the US Congress—has been completely usurped”
Brennan, Rice, Power -- Lock Them Up!
By David Stockman
David Stockman's Contra Corner
July 22, 2017
We frequently hear people say they have nothing to hide - so surrendering privacy and constitutional rights to the Surveillance State may not be such a big deal if it helps catch a terrorist or two. But with each passing day in the RussiaGate drama we are learning that this superficial exoneration is dangerously beside the point.
We are referring here to the unrelenting witch hunt that has been unleashed by Imperial Washington against the legitimately elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. This campaign of lies, leaks and Russophobia is the handiwork of Obama’s top national security advisors, who blatantly misused Washington’s surveillance apparatus to discredit Trump and to effectively nullify America’s democratic process.
That is, constitutional protections and liberties were systematically breached, but not simply to intimidate, hush or lock up citizens one by one as per the standard totalitarian modus operandi. Instead, what has happened is that the entire public debate has been hijacked by the shadowy forces of the Deep State and their partisan and media collaborators.
The enabling culprits are Obama’s last CIA director, John Brennan, his national security advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power. There is now mounting evidence that it was they who illegally “unmasked” NSA intercepts from Trump Tower; they who confected the Russian meddling narrative from behind the protective moat of classified intelligence; and they who orchestrated a systematic campaign of leaks and phony intelligence reports during the presidential transition—-all designed to delegitimize Trump before he even took the oath of office.
All three of them should be locked­ up—-that’s for sure. But the more urgent solution would be to unlock and make public all the innuendo, surmises, assessments, half-truths and boilerplate intelligence chatter on which the entire false narrative about Russian meddling and collusion is based.
Stated differently, without the nation’s massive intelligence apparatus and absurd system of secrecy and classified information to hide behind, the RussiaGate witch hunt would have never gotten off the ground.
In truth, as we will essay below, there is no there, there. So what this new chapter in McCarthyite hysteria actually demonstrates is that the Imperial City’s far-flung, 17-agency, $75 billion Intelligence Behemoth is a plenary threat not just too individual liberty, but to the very constitutional democracy on which the latter depends.
To appreciate the severity of the threat, it is necessary to recognize that the post-9/11 Deep State has lowered a double whammy on our system. That is, it unconstitutionally collects the entirety of all internet based communications of America’s 325 million citizens, while at the same time it has effectively disenfranchised 98% of the 535 members of the House and Senate who have been elected to represent them.
Accordingly, behind the Surveillance State’s vast wall of secrecy and so-called “classified” information, there operates a Dark Government that is unaccountable to the public and largely unconstrained by normal constitutional limits, which the Patriot Act and secret FISA courts have more or less suspended.
In the realm of this Dark Government, the heart of American democracy—-the US Congress—has been completely usurped. Almost everything behind the secrecy wall is off limits to the rank and file. Only a handful of intelligence committee members and the House and Senate leadership get sworn into the classified intelligence.
Yet just consider the hideous asymmetry of this arrangement. The so-called “Gang of Eight,” comprising the heads of the intelligence oversight committees and their respective party leadership, gets orally briefed in a secure “vault”, where they can’t take notes or carry-out any documents.
Moreover, this select handful of legislators consists of the incessantly mobilized and frazzled potentates of Capitol Hill who are always knee-deep in a thousand other distractions—-including a heavy quotient of politicking, fund-raising, and campaign trail excursions.
On the inside of the Surveillance State wall, by contrast, there are 600,000 employees or contractors with “top secret” security clearances alone; and more than 4 million total operatives who spend night and days feasting on the $75 billion Intelligence Community (IC) budget and carrying out projects and missions designed to justify their existence and keep the budgetary gravy train flowing.
For example, in the National Security Agency (NSA) there is a subsidiary entity called TAO (Targeted Access Operations) with a budget of several billions and more than 1,000 employees. The latter predominately consist of high-powered civilian and military hackers, computer geeks, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers and electrical engineers—-whose job it is to do exactly what Russia is being accused of.
Namely, to hack and electronically infiltrate the communications and operations of nearly every government on the planet, and most especially those of IC designated enemies and adversaries such as Russia and Iran.  Indeed, TAOs motto says it all:

“Your data is our data; your equipment is our equipment ­ anytime, anyplace, by any legal means.”

In any given 24-hour day, the TAO hacks and deposits more disinformation and malware into its targeted foreign networks than all the low level Russian probes that were intercepted by NSA during the entire Presidential campaign.
In other words, Washington is the mother of all hackers and cyber-warfare operations, and what Russia and other nations do is only a small potatoes version of the same. Yet the overwhelming share of these digital cloak and dagger operation by all sides is a huge waste of national resources; and most especially it is of no value at all to the safety of the American people.

That because Russia, China and Iran—-the principal targets of the IC’s massive surveillance and cyber warfare activities—are no threats whatsoever to America’s security.

Iran has zero military capacity to attack the American homeland, and the claim that it is the leading sponsor of terrorism is pure bunkum. That hoary claim has been concocted by the Washington neocons and the Netanyahu political machine—both of which need demonized enemies in order to nurture the public fears on which their power is based.
Likewise, Russia has one 40-year old smoke-belching aircraft carrier and a fleet of rowboats—–neither of which are capable of launching an assault on the New Jersey shores. True, it does have about 1,000 nuclear warheads; but where is the evidence that cool-hand Vlad is contemplating national suicide by using them against the US or Europe?
The purported Chinese threat is even more ludicrous. Notwithstanding the fertile imaginations of the Deep State fear-mongers who believe the South China Sea is actually an American Lake, the Red Suzerains of Beijing know fully well that without the continuous custom of Wal-Mart and Amazon warehouses, the Red Ponzi would collapse in a heartbeat. And that they would be hung by angry mobs from the CCTV (China Central Television) Tower shortly thereafter.

In fact, we don’t need the $75 billion Surveillance State to deal with the Taliban, the jihadist warlords of Somalia or any of the warring Sunni vs. Shiite (Houthis [Note from norm: Houthis is a Shia-led political movement]) parties of Yemen, either. They do not threaten America’s security in the slightest.

Nor did the government of Khadafy in Libya after he turned in his nukes; likewise, the Assad regime has never, ever threatened to harm America—-despite the non-stop vilification from Washington.
At most, Washington needs modest local and theatre level capacity to monitor the fading remnants of the Islamic State—-a temporary scourge in the mostly the impoverished Sunni villages of the Upper Euphrates, which would not even exist in the first place had it not been fostered and armed with the weapons the US Army left behind in the fiasco of Iraq.

So consider the contra factual. In the absence of a vast Warfare State apparatus and associated Surveillance State wall of secrecy what would RussiaGate amount to?

The answer is straight-forward: It was nothing more than a politically motivated plot orchestrated by former CIA director Brennan to undermine the Presidential campaign of a rambunctious outsider. That is, the Donald was unschooled in the groupthink of the Imperial City and had enough common sense to realize that Putin is not our enemy, that NATO is obsolete, that regime change has been a fiasco and that foreign policy should be based on homeland security first, not the perpetuation of an American Empire abroad.

Those inchoate impulses were the Donald’s original sin, and it was unverified and self-serving “intelligence” from the Latvian security service—-of all things—- that provided the pretext for Brennan to launch the Deep State’s own version of jihad against Trump.

What this dubious intelligence did was to finger Vlad Putin himself and that was crucial. It permitted Brennan to puff-up the evidence of run-of-the-mill cyber intrusions by the Russian security services—-or even unconnected Russian hackers and profiteers— into a sweeping but phony narrative about an attack on American democracy with Putin at the very center.

As Scott Ritter—- the weapons expert who blew the whistle on the IC’s trumped up claims about Saddam’s WMDs—-succinctly explained in a recent article, Brennan proceeded to turn a dubious molehill into a veritable mountain:

According to reporting from the Washington Post, sometime during this period, CIA Director John Brennan gained access to a sensitive intelligence report from a foreign intelligence service. This service claimed to have technically penetrated the inner circle of Russian leadership to the extent that it could give voice to the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin as he articulated Russia’s objectives regarding the 2016 U.S. Presidential election — to defeat Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump, her Republican opponent. This intelligence was briefed to President Barack Obama and a handful of his closest advisors in early August, with strict instructions that it not be further disseminated.
The explosive nature of this intelligence report, both in terms of its sourcing and content; served to drive the investigation of Russian meddling in the American electoral process by the U.S. intelligence community. The problem, however, was that it wasn’t the U.S. intelligence community, per se, undertaking this investigation, but rather (according to the Washington Post) a task force composed of “several dozen analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI,” hand­picked by the CIA director and set up at the CIA Headquarters who “functioned as a sealed compartment, its work hidden from the rest of the intelligence community.”
The result was a closed circle of analysts who operated in complete isolation from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community. The premise of their work — that Vladimir Putin personally directed Russian meddling in the U.S. Presidential election to tip the balance in favor of Donald Trump — was never questioned in any meaningful fashion, despite its sourcing to a single intelligence report from a foreign service.
President Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to undertake a comprehensive review of Russian electoral meddling. As a result, intelligence analysts began to reexamine old intelligence reports based upon the premise of Putin’s direct involvement, allowing a deeply disturbing picture to be created of a comprehensive Russian campaign to undermine the American electoral process.

Here’s the thing. Vlad didn’t do it. The only interference in the electoral process that he has been associated with is with respect to what Imperial Washington did next door while he was basking in glory at the Sochi Olympics in February 2014.
To wit, the violent coup on the streets of Kiev was organized by agents and organs of the US government; overthrew a constitutionally elected President who had decided to make an economic and security deal with Russia rather than Europe and NATO in keeping with Ukraine’s economic propinquity to the former and its 700- years of history as an integral part of Greater Russia; and which imposed a new government, hand-picked by the Obama State Department, which was dominated by Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis who were demonstrably hostile to the Russian speaking populations of Crimea and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Stated differently, Imperial Washington is the world champion meddler in other peoples’ politics and elections.

Since the CIA sponsored coup against the Mosaddegh government in Iran in 1953, it has sponsored more than eighty incidents ranging from election bag money to military coups.

By contrast, the putative Russian attack on American democracy consists of three specific accusations—all of which are readily refutable.
In the first place, Podesta’s password was “password” and could have been hacked by any fat guy, or not, on any computer plugged into the worldwide web anywhere.
Moreover, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who makes a living disclosing the truth, not propagating lies as does the IC, says it did not come from Russian state agents; and that it was in fact leaked, not hacked, by disgruntled Democrat insiders.

In any event, if it had actually been hacked by either Russian agents or the proverbial fat guy, there would be a digital imprint stored in NSA’s vast server farms. The fact that it hasn’t leaked amidst all the rest of the anti-Russian innuendo and intelligence hearsay proves beyond much doubt that no such record exists and no such Russian intrusion ever happened.
As for the DNC emails, the smoking gun there still smolders in plain sight. The FBI apparently never even took custody of the DNC computer—–farming out the job to an outfit named Crowdstrike.   Alas, the latter is a DNC contractor and wannabe Silicon Valley IPO run by some fanatical Russian ex-pats looking for fame and fortune. It’s no wonder they didn’t want the FBI second guessing their conclusions

Finally, there is the Latvian “intelligence” morsel about Putin’s personal direction of the election meddling campaign. If the Donald had any common sense he would declassify said report forthwith.
But never mind. It surely doesn’t exist anyway—-or it too would have leaked long ago.

And that’s all she wrote. The rest is pure spin leaked by Trump’s enemies in the Deep State and canonized by its collaborators in the main stream media.

Unfortunately, the Donald doesn’t seem to recognize that he is actually President.  If he did, he would have the Justice Department launch a prosecution against the faithless officials—-Brennan, Rice and Power—-who concocted the whole RussiaGate defamation in the first place.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

GOP Health Care Fiasco: If they voted against Obama Care in 2010, why are they voting for Obama Care in 2017?

The Affordable Care Act...aka "Obama Care", one of the worst pieces of legislation in America's history!
The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it. The next day, Republicans introduced legislation to repeal the bill. Obama signed ACA into law on March 23, 2010.

Question of the day:
If all 178 Republicans voted against the Affordable Care Act back in 2010, then why are they voting for it now?
The so-called Affordable Care Act is really not that affordable.  Health insurance premiums increased 99% for individuals and 140% for families after the legislation was put into force.  "Force?"  The expression, "May the force be with you." takes on new meaning; you are forced to pay more for your health insurance whether you like it or not. 
If Republicans introduced legislation to repeal Obama Care in 2010 why do they want to replace it in 2017?  Repeal, repeal, repeal; stick that in your legislative brain and forget replace...we once had the best health care in the world before the government got involved so get the government out.

Related reads:

1.  How Much Did Obamacare Cost? 

2. Donald Trump on Health Care

Saturday, July 15, 2017

IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER

IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER
By Norman E. Hooben

While perusing the various news headlines I usually look for biases in the main stream media (MSM)…and it’s not too difficult to find.  Just a moment ago I caught this headline over at USA TODAY on line:
Political football: Judicial Watch finds Pence flight to Super Bowl cost $89,246
Bart Jansen, USA TODAY Published 5:39 p.m. ET July 14, 2017 | Updated 6:33 p.m. July 14, 2017
No sense reposting the narrative, the headline makes their point if there is one.  So the USA TODAY is attempting to play mind games with their readers hoping that this negative reporting will stick in the mind of the voter on the next run for the White House.  Believe me, there will be plenty more negatives to come.  But has any voter ever retained this kind of nonsense?  The spending habits of all presidents seem to go in one ear and out the other.  Just take for example the spending habits Barack Hussein Obama.  He cost the taxpayers $2,739,726.03 per day!  That headline read:

Did you remember that when you went to the voting booth?  Yeah, I bet!

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

CNN Caught Lying Nearly 16,000 Times plus all you need to know about FAKE NEWS and Dirty Tricks

The video below was taken down by powers greater than me...I replaced it with the one above.

Published on Jun 4, 2017

CNN Caught Being Fake News - Staging A Backdrop Of Protesters. From Twitter - It was caught on camera them handing out signs.
At London Bridge Terror Attack scene.They left immediately after CNN finished reporting. Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/markantro/...
"CNN also timed this and BBC wanted to film it when they were on
Note the white police officers leaving before the CNN shot & the Asian officers coming in. They then left after they went off air!"
The only other explanation could be if they were filming a movie.

_______________________________

WHOA! BREAKING NEWS:
CNN Producer Caught On Undercover Tape Admitting Trump-Russia Coverage Is BULLSH*T…”President Is Right To Say You Are ‘Witch Hunting’ Me” (VIDEO)
100 Percent Fed Up

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reporters went undercover at CNN to investigate the Very Fake News network to determine the motivation behind CNN’s Trump-Russia collusion obsession. Since the inauguration, CNN has mentioned “Russian story” nearly 16,000 times.
Project Veritas’ reporters can be seen in the video below having a conversation with CNN’s supervising producer John Bonifield. The reporter talked to Bonifield first about the constant barrage of Trump-Russia stories on CNN. Bonifield admitted that although CNN has no evidence or proof of Trump involvement with Russia, they continue to make it their top story on CNN simply for “ratings” and to “make money.” Bonifield has worked as a journalist and as a producer for nearly 15 years at CNN, making him a pretty reliable source when it comes to how things work at CNN.
Bonifield actually confessed to the undercover Project Veritas journalist that President Trump is correct when he says the media is on a “witch hunt” to take him down. Bonifield told the reporter: “I think the President is right to say, like, look you are ‘witch hunting me’ you have no real smoking gun, you have no proof.”
Bonifield went on to admit how CNN is biased and is playing to their audience by attacking President Trump, therefore admitting that “Trump is good for business right now.” The Project Veritas reporter asked Bonifield, “But honestly, you think the whole Russia shit is bullshit?” to which Bonifield replied: “Could be bullshit. I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right now. Like, we don’t have any big, giant proof. The way these leaks happen, they’d leak it. It’d leak. If it was something really good, it would leak.”
Watch the unbelievable video here:
Did the three resignations that took place at CNN today have anything to do with the impending release of O’Keefe’s explosive video proving that CNN manufactures Trump-Russia collusion stories for ratings, or for money?
The story about the three CNN employees resigning for publishing fake news broke yesterday. Is ti a coincidence that today, O’Keefe released this explosive bombshell video?
Here’s the story that broke yesterday: 
CNN employees have resigned for their role in pushing fake news about the Trump-Russia story that claimed a member of the Trump transition team was under investigation.
Reporter Thomas Frank, editor Eric Lichtblau and executive editor Lex Haris all resigned from their positions following a company-wide investigation into the single-sourced story that was quickly debunked, The Washington Post first reported. CNN quickly followed up with a story of their own on the resignations. Lichtblau reportedly oversaw the false story, while Haris headed up CNN’s investigative unit.
“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” CNN’s coverage quotes a company spokesman as saying.
Philly.com – On Thursday evening, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank published a potentially explosive report involving an investigation of a Russian investment fund with potential ties to several associates of President Donald Trump.
But by Friday night, the story was removed from CNN’s website and all links were scrubbed from the network’s social media accounts.
“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” CNN said in an editors note posted in place of the story. “Links to the story have been disabled.”

_________________________

A Brief History of ‘Fake News’
By Paul Davis @ American Thinker

The original concept of fake news was called “disinformation,” an invention of Joseph Stalin, who coined the term.  Some writings from the time indicated that the Soviets in many cases considered disinformation to be a higher intelligence priority then actual intelligence collection. This appears to be a continuing philosophy, with intelligence collection left to independent hackers and the thrust of state sponsored intelligence going to disinformation (dezinformatsiya).
Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive and cause chaos. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the Soviet bloc explained in his book Disinformation that the ultimate measure of success for disinformation was when the major organs of the media coud be tricked into unknowingly propagating deliberate falsehoods.

But the Russians are far from the only ones practicing disinformation designed against political systems. The current investigations of alleged “Russian collusion” on Capitol Hill are the result of a disinformation campaign that was begun by the Democratic Party and continued when the mainstream media were fooled into publicizing the accusations as fact.
This is not to say the Russians weren’t involved. There was much made of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s “Trump Dossier.” The dossier contained a lot of unverified allegations against Trump that would lead the reader to assume the Russians were either in contact and helping him or that they had enough information to blackmail him once he was in office. What is less well publicized is that Steele paid for the information, that he paid what turned out to be Russian operatives, and that he was never able to verify the information he received. There have been attempts to breathe life into the dossier by pointing out that parts seemingly have been verified by recent independent revelations. This is, however, part and parcel of a disinformation campaign, finding ways to shore up the reports you have already pushed out.

Of course, this type of reasoning can drive you crazy. If any lie can be proved true, then what is true?  Actually, it’s not that difficult.  You need multiple sources to confirm a story and they must be vetted to be trusted. This is where the disinformation campaign falls apart. The deeper you dig, the less the “facts” hold up.
This process appears to be happening now with the investigations into the Trump campaign and the Russians. The so-called multiple contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives were a bunch of disconnected and unrelated data points. So-and-so met with this person that has a connection to the Russian government. Look deep and there is a good and legitimate reason.  President Trumps’ son-in-law attempted to set up a back channel to Russia. This is standard stuff and we only knew about some of it by intercepting the Russian ambassador’s communications with Moscow that he knew were being intercepted and read. So, there was a meeting between Jared Kushner and the Russian Ambassador. This we know is true, but the exact contents may or may not have been revealed. If they were, it is still nothing, as back channels are a normal part of statecraft. We also know, or at least most believe, the DNC was hacked and e-mails released. This, however, is not a disinformation campaign since what was in the e-mails is true. This is a crime, as hacking is a crime, but it is not disinformation.

What was begun as a political talking point to explain the unexplainable, that Clinton lost to Trump, morphed into disinformation and is being carried so far that now the Russians have latched onto it to continue a campaign of disruption of the American government and political system.
What is happening now is that very good people are putting out misinformation, information that is not true but is believed to be so by those making the statements. Unfortunately, the process of countering the lies takes time and energy.  But as with Jared Kushner, the lies must be exposed and ended. I understand that the Dems would like to keep this going to win back the House of Representatives and the Senate, but the damage it is doing to the country is not worth it, even if it could work which is looking less and less likely. The American people are facing fatigue on this issue.

Disinformation only works if people refuse to think or find it easier not to. I ask all, to please think about what is being laid in front of you and see if it makes sense.
Paul Davis is a retired Army Military Intelligence Analyst who began as a Soviet analyst and moved on to Korea and the Middle East and worked as a consultant to the Intelligence Community after retirement.   
___________________________________

The following video was Published on Oct 17, 2016
In this explosive new video from Project Veritas Action, a Democratic dirty tricks operative unwittingly provides a dark money trail to the DNC and Clinton campaign. The video documents violence at Trump rallies that is traced to the Clinton campaign and the DNC through a process called birddogging.
A shady coordinated communications chain between the DNC, Clinton Campaign, Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC (Priorities) and other organizations are revealed. A key Clinton operative is on camera saying, “It doesn’t matter what the friggin’ legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker."
Website: http://projectveritasaction.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVerit...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@Pveritas_Action


 

Sunday, June 25, 2017

CLIMATE CHANGE...massively overblown claims of immediate and impending disaster.

My Reasons For Doubting Global Warming Theory
By Politics Alabama
Part 5: In Conclusion
This is part 5 of a 5-part series. Read the Introduction, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here.

The theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, which has since been renamed Climate Change, attempts to prove that human actions are driving dramatic increases in temperature, with all of the associated side-effects of melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, and more, all leading to a world-changing conclusion.
But the climate of this planet has been changing since the planet itself was first created, and has been both hotter and colder than it is today. The “Little Ice Age” ended in the mid-1800’s, so why are we surprised by a period of warming? That’s sort of what logically comes next, right?
The plethora of climate computer models are a joke, seeming to be more of an attempt to “prove” an already determined outcome than accurately reflect how the climate functions. Because they want to show that man has a dramatic upwards effect on temperatures, that’s what the computer models show. Reality, however, doesn’t agree, and most computer models consistently overshoot what actually happens.
Climate Change scientists exist in a quasi-incestual relationship with government. Government funds the research into climate change, which they then use to justify new programs and increased power over “the environment”… and us. Where does the dog end and the tail begin? It’s hard to tell, but it is clear that the practical effect is to promote pro-global warming research and inhibit any contrary research. Global Warming scientists themselves have tilted the playing field further through the peer review process, and then claim the lack of publication proves that “the science is settled.” Somewhere in the middle of all of this, the actual science sort of gets lost behind the hype.

And then there are the constant, never-ending, and massively overblown claims of immediate and impending disaster. Predictions of future destruction are gleefully shared in order to justify more funding or passage of specific measures, but somehow the predictions never come true. There are no roving bands of climate refugees. The sea level hasn’t risen to the point that coastal areas are flooding. The arctic ice caps haven’t turned into a few scattered ice cubes floating in a sea of boiling saltwater. All this panic doesn’t make me more likely to believe what you’re saying… quite the reverse.

I still remember the year that “scientists” proclaimed that global warming would cause super-hurricanes of incredible strength, and more of them than ever. I admit I chuckled when the year ended with almost historically low hurricane activity. After that, the ridiculous claims died down to… well, more reasonable levels.

The claims are legion, but consistently false. Have you heard that the polar bear populations are declining at an alarming rate? I’m sure you have, as it’s a favorite and easy target. But it isn’t true, as polar bear populations are pretty stable, stymying past predictions of their demise. Of course, the truth isn’t stopping new forecasts of dying polar bears.

So, what DO I believe? To put it simply, I believe that yes, man’s presence on the planet does affect the climate, but not to anything like a great degree. Slightly. We are not heading for a disaster, civilization is not going to drown with a gurgle, and polar bears are not going to disappear. No great catastrophe is looming, so dramatic and expensive government action is unwarranted. We shouldn’t tax coal into extinction, we shouldn’t run gasoline prices up to European levels in order to inspire a switch to electric cars, and we shouldn’t abandon our power gird in favor of solar and wind power. No, we shouldn't place such rigorous requirements on emissions that businesses and power plants are forced to close. The danger isn’t real, the extreme, doomsday claims aren’t accurate.

What drives the global temperatures to a much greater extent are the sun and natural processes such as volcanoes. Mankind contributes a very small fraction of the greenhouse gasses introduced into the atmosphere each year, after all. The climate changes naturally, and human activity hasn’t changed that.

Do I believe in global warming?

If, by global warming, you mean that the planet has gotten warmer since the Little Ice Age, I can agree with that. If, on the other hand, you mean that human activity is forcing global temperatures higher and higher to the point that one catastrophe or another will occur, there we part company.

Global warming is real, but it’s nothing to upend human civilization about.

Now, after finishing this long series of posts, I’m hungry. Anybody know where I can score a polar bear steak?