Blue Crab Boulevard

It's as if the AGW crowd has simply throw up their hands and yelled, "Ockham's Razor be damned!"  Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming

 Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

“Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. “Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

Got that? 

So here is how the story goes.  "We got this theory, see, all about how your SUV is destroying the earth by pumping it full of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, you know.  As CO2 increases so does the temperatures.  (Didn't you see Al's flick?)  Except, of course, for those times when increased CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't lead to higher temperatures. We thought we might be in trouble there, as our theory looks like it says the opposite thing.  But, don't you worry, because we got ourselves a codicil, you see, that allows for cooler temperatures while Global Warming is still ongoing.  Pretty nifty, eh?  And if that isn't enough and the weather still ain't acting like its supposeda in a decade or so, we got a line in to the Pope to see about swinging ourselves a special dispensation."

What could more scientific than that?

Or, as Tully over at Stubborn Facts put it brilliantly:

When the data inconveniently refuses to conform to your theory, just how should a True Believer in that theory respond?

Why, add an epicycle, of course!

I suppose the more baroque a theory is the better it expresses "consensus." 

USA Today reports that business customers are staying away in droves from Microsoft's Vista operating system. It seems that they are perfectly happy with Windows XP and would just as soon not switch.

"I wouldn't put on Vista if it was free," says Weider, chief information officer for Ministry Health Care. "In the past, there's always been an important reason to upgrade, but XP (the previous version of Windows) is perfectly acceptable."

Even as it pursues Internet icon Yahoo to create a more potent online-advertising rival to Google, Microsoft is facing increasing pressure on its Windows cash cow. Corporate customers such as Weider are staging a rare revolt over upgrading to Vista, which launched with much fanfare in January 2007. Last week, Microsoft reported a 24% decline in Windows sales in the third quarter.

"This year is make-it-or-break-it time for Vista," says analyst Benjamin Gray of market tracker Forrester Research. "Vista is getting hammered right and left in the press, and companies are concerned. I'm getting daily client inquiries about skipping Vista altogether and waiting for the next version of Windows. Microsoft is having a tough time convincing their corporate clients that Vista isn't a risky bet."

Microsoft rebuilt Windows from scratch to create Vista, which has a dazzling interface and improved security tools. But so much computing power is required to run it that many people find their new PCs run slower than older, less powerful XP machines. To spur sales, Microsoft earlier this month said consumers will no longer be able to purchase XP as of June 30. The announcement and pending date have unleashed a firestorm of Vista angst.

Online magazine InfoWorld is waging a Save XP campaign. More than 175,000 signatures have been gathered. "Why pull the plug on XP when there's clearly a lot of people who still like it?" says Galen Gruman, InfoWorld executive editor.

Influential analyst Michael Silver at research firm Gartner calls the Vista launch a "disaster." Other critics have been no kinder. CNet called Vista one of the "biggest blunders in technology." PC magazine chronicles Vista's "11 Pillars of Failure." The Christian Science Monitor likened it to Coca-Cola's disastrous New Coke experiment in the 1980s.

Ouch. Frankly, my daughter's Vista computer is the slowest one in the house, despite a dual core processor and two gigs if RAM. My son's antique Pentium II with 96MB of Ram boots faster. I suspect Vista will be remembered as a bust in years to come, especially since an all-new version of Microsoft's operating system is due out in as little as 18 months.

Oh, and Ubuntu Linux version 8.04 is now available. If Microsoft does kill Windows XP on June 30th as they are promising, a lot of older hardware will be switched over to Linux - that will be a bad thing for Microsoft, I think.

The Washington Post reports on a disturbing trend. America's farmers are significantly reducing the amount of wheat they are planting and turning to more lucrative crops (yes, we seem to be on a farm trend this evening).

"Wheat was king once," said David Braaten, whose Norwegian immigrant grandparents built their Kindred, N.D., farm around wheat a century ago. "Now I just don't want to grow it. It's not a consistent crop."

In the 1980s, more than half the farm's acres were wheat. This year only one in 10 will be, and 40 percent will go to soybeans. Braaten and other farmers are considering investing in a $180 million plant to turn the beans into animal feed and cooking oil, both now in strong demand in China. And to stress his hopes for ethanol, his business card shows a sketch of a fuel pump.

Across the Red River and farther north, in Euclid, Minn., Don Strickler, 63, describes wheat as "a necessary evil." Most years, he explained, farmers lose money on it. Still, it provides conservation benefits and can block diseases in soybeans and sugar beets when rotated with those crops.

Wheat's fall from favor, little noticed when it was cheap, has been long coming. Though still an iconic symbol of American abundance — engraved on currency and praised in song — the nation's amber waves of wheat have been increasingly shoved aside by other crops. The "breadbasket of the world," which had alleviated hunger and famine since World War I, now generally supplies only a quarter of world wheat exports.

U.S. farmers are expected to plant about 64 million acres of wheat this year, down from a high of 88 million in 1981. In Kansas, wheat acreage has declined by a third since the mid-1980s, and nationwide, there is now less wheat in grain bins than at any time since World War II — only about enough to supply the world for four days. This occurs as developing countries with some of the poorest populations are rapidly increasing their wheat imports.

Adding to the problem: seed companies have turned away from improving wheat, concentrating on corn and soybeans. Crop yields are stagnant for wheat. Fewer and fewer acres under cultivation for wheat mean the supply is dropping. Bottom line: prices are not going to fall any time soon, if ever. So says the USDA.

Crop prices are skyrocketing, globally and for American farmers. So what's the big debate in Washington today? How much Federal money needs to go to subsidize multi-million dollar earning farmers.

WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators late Tuesday scrambled to meet President Bush's demands on a multibillion-dollar farm bill, considering cutting subsidies for wealthy farmers.
 
Earlier in the day, Bush had renewed his call to reduce such subsidies, saying the "massive, bloated" bill would do little to stem rising food costs. Negotiators met with Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer soon afterward.

That meeting was "sobering," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. He said the Bush administration had a laundry list of demands for the legislation, which lawmakers were hurrying to finish before current farm law expires Friday. The law has been extended several times, and lawmakers have said another one-week extension may be necessary.

Emerging from several hours of meetings, Conrad and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said negotiators would further limit subsidies and cut other spending in response to the administration's demands.

"We moved considerably," said Harkin, though he declined to share specifics and said all of the bill's negotiators had not yet agreed on the cuts.

At issue: Bush wants payments limited for those who make more than $200,000 a year. The House bill limits payments to those suffering farmers who have to struggle by on a paltry $1,000,000 a year. The Senate version caps it at a miserly $750,000. That is your tax money - and mine - that Congress is trying to glad hand away to people who have no need for it.

I rather wish that Bush had come to fiscal responsibility a bit sooner than this. But this obscenity of a farm bill needs to be stopped, even at this late date.

Bonus question: Who really thinks Congress and Washington could come up with the right answer for fixing health care, given this example? If you raised your hand, slap some sense into yourself.

It seems that Al Franken has been avoiding paying state taxes for a number of years. Not one state, mind you. In fact a total of 17 states would like Mr. Franken to cough up some $70,000 he owes them.

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken, frontrunner in the race to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, owes $70,000 in back taxes in 17 states, where he earned income going back to 2003.

Franken on Tuesday told the Associated Press that he never intended to avoid paying taxes and that on the advice of his accountant, had paid taxes to the city and state where he lived.

Franken has been under fire since early March, when a Republican operative revealed that Franken had failed to pay workers' compensation and disability premiums for employees of his New York-based corporation, Alan Franken, Inc., between 2002 and 2005.

New York state officials had tried to collect the back premiums for four years, resorting to a collection agency and even filing a summary judgment against Franken in state Supreme Court last May for $25,000.

Franken said he was unaware of the state's numerous attempts to contact him and finally was forced to acknowledge his error and make restitution earlier this month.

Ed Morrisey happens to know the "Republican operative" who broke the story and points out that Michael Brodkorb didn't even know about 15 of the states who'd like Franken to cough up some of his cash. This is the kind of story that sinks candidates. Franken is representing the Democrats (or their local proxy, Minnesota being somewhat odd) who are very much in favor of raising taxes in general. Apparently, just so long as they don't actually have to pay them.

Barack Obama officially jettisoned Jeremiah Wright today calling Wright's remarks - in recent days, at least - "divisive and destructive."

"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.

"If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."

How badly did Wright poll for Obama to reverse himself from his support - just a month ago or so - of Wright's venom? I would guess it was very badly indeed. James Joyner thinks Obama has stopped the bleeding with this. Possibly. But I'd point out that a lot of damage has already been done and that there is blood in the water now. This latest Wright explosion happened just as many voters were beginning to pay attention. Personally, I suspect Obama barred the barn door about a week after the horse moved out.  

John Fund points out that Barack Obama is on the wrong side of voter identification laws - as yesterday's Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law shows.

In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law – the toughest in the nation – the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.

Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.

But this case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, also revealed a fundamental philosophical conflict between two perspectives rooted in the machine politics of Chicago. Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision, grew up in Hyde Park, the city neighborhood where Sen. Barack Obama – the most vociferous Congressional critic of such laws – lives now. Both men have seen how the Daley machine has governed the city for so many years, with a mix of patronage, contract favoritism and, where necessary, voter fraud.

That fraud became nationally famous in 1960, when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's extraordinary efforts swung Illinois into John F. Kennedy's column. In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead.

Fund points out Obama's long association with ACORN, a group that has had numerous run-ins with the law over its questionable voter registrations. Obama filed a brief with the Supreme Court for this case - and was on the wrong side of the decision. (ACORN did so as well.)

Just call it theme night here at the Crabitat!

From the Houston Chronicale: Hurricane forecaster's dispute with school focuses on global warming debate

By pioneering the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting and teaching 70 graduate students who now populate the National Hurricane Center and other research outposts, William Gray turned a city far from the stormy seas into a hurricane research mecca.

But now the institution in Fort Collins, Colo., where he has worked for nearly half a century, has told Gray it may end its support of his seasonal forecasting.

As he enters his 25th year of predicting hurricane season activity, Colorado State University officials say handling media inquiries related to Gray's forecasting requires too much time and detracts from efforts to promote other professors' work.

But Gray, a highly visible and sometimes acerbic skeptic of climate change, says that's a "flimsy excuse" for the real motivation — a desire to push him aside because of his global warming criticism.

Among other comments, Gray has said global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children."

Now an emeritus professor, Gray declined to comment on the university's possible termination of promotional support.

But a memo he wrote last year, after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, reveals his views:

"This is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign (sic) in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms," Gray wrote to Dick Johnson, head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and others.

Gray should know that deviation from the party line is strictly verboten.

And do you want the winner for the single most disengenuous statement of 2008?  Getaloadofthis:

The dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, said she spoke with Gray about terminating media support for his forecasts solely because of the strain it placed on the college's sole media staffer.

Yeah, that's right.  Universities hate it when they get publicity.  In a related note CSU has announced they are dropping men's football and basketball because they also attract too much darn attention to the school.

(H/T to Roger Pielke.)

You remember our actual weather, such as the extremely harsh winter that still is causing havoc in many part of North America as we head into May?  Well, its effects have been devestating: Where The Buffalo Roam - And Die

 More than half of Yellowstone National Park's bison herd has died since last fall, forcing the government to suspend its annual slaughter program.

More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died on the mountainsides during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.

As a result, the park estimates its bison herd has dropped from 4,700 in November to about 2,300 today, prompting the government to halt the culling program early.

Evidently, the harsh winter has forced the buffalo to search for better grazing land which has led to their posing a threat to the business of cattle ranchers:

Bison graze high on Yellowstone's grassy plateaus during the summer. When the weather becomes too harsh and food becomes scarce, they often roam outside the park. That's the problem.

Nash explained the situation in its simplest terms:

"Bison are bison. Bison are nomadic animals. Bison are looking for food. Food is difficult and scarce to come by at the end of the winter. They're leaving the interior of the park [and going] to lower places, in part, to look for food. There's limited tolerance for bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park."

That's because just two cases of brucellosis would trigger stringent limits on export of cattle from Montana.

"Montana has spent millions of dollars over the years to get brucellosis eradicated from our livestock," said Martin Davis, who has a cattle ranch within roaming distance north of the park. "And to put that in jeopardy — no one wants that to happen."

Control of the bison population is essential, Davis said.

"Bottom line is, there's too many of them. They've got to be managed. They ran out of pasture. … They're eating themselves out of house and home."

Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm points out the real victim of the "global warming" hysteria: real conservationism.

At the risk of sounding corny, we believe in good stewardship of our inheritance.

What's irrational? The Green Movement is irrational. Most of it represents feel-good ideas that are hooey: symbolic hooey that is meant to make people feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. Witness the lightbulb craze, "organic" vegetables, "recycling" plastic bottles (totally energy-inefficient), or hybrid cars (which do nothing "for the planet" but which are great on gas mileage). It's empty vanity and fashion, and nothing more (for an example, see this foolish agonizing piece by Michael Pollan), who has caught a bad case of the vain and guilt-ridden sanctimony of the "I can make a difference" disorder.

Pure organic pixie dust for the latte liberals.

The CO2 obsession is similarly irrational, and, deep down, everybody must know it. It is irrational because it is futile, regardless of whether there is any current warming, and regardless of whether there is any man-made warming.

I've pointed out that it has never been easier to rape the planet right now. Say you're producing biofuel and you have a free pass to eradicate a rain forest. But true conservation is being dragged down into the insanity of the extremists. Bird Dog has it exactly right here. Go read it all.