Did you ever wonder why...

The late Andy Rooney used to ask that question, and sometimes he got a pretty good rant going. I tried to find a good video of that, but my google fu seems to be busted.

Anyway, here's a bit of a rant. I promise not to do this very often.

So, did you ever wonder why any of us are still alive? We’re each of us, after all, faced with extraordinary and immediate existential threats on a daily basis. At least that’s what the major media and almost every government agency love to tell us, anyway. I think the only exception is the IRS, who simply remind us that no matter what we're slaughtered by, Uncle Sugar will still get her pound of flesh.

Monday morning Nebraska Panhandle residents received this chilling alert:

HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHEYENNE, 355 AM MDT MON MAR 16 2015. NORTH TO NORTHWEST WINDS WILL INCREASE LATE THIS MORNING ACROSS THE PANHANDLE WITH GUSTS AROUND 40 MPH POSSIBLE THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.

My goodness, we’re all lucky to be alive! Forty mph winds have been known to, er, well… blow paper around?

What is the major malfunction with the National Weather Service? For some reason they’ve decided that their job is no longer to study and forecast climate and weather. Their new and vastly improved job is to save lives.

They've no training in real lifesaving, so they’ve taken the approach of trying to frighten people into permanently hunkering down in the safety of their homes, so that no one will ever, ever, ever be laid low by natural atmospheric phenomena.

Do you think these bozos ever heard about chicken little or the boy who cried wolf?

Does the NWS understand that the natural consequence of publishing endless sensational warnings and alerts is that the public will (and now mostly does) ignore the daily and predictable hysteria? I doubt the question ever occurred to them. They’re too busy saving lives, you see.

Lord love a duck.

Warning!

At a slight tangent, did you ever wonder why it is, that if the science of global warming is settled, no one in science or government can point to a single piece of evidence and say, "there you are, proof." Not valid or honest evidence anyway.

The UN, the White House, the NWS, NOAA, and the thoroughly discredited paleoclimatology crowd are now predicting the looming threat of a megadrought. For the uninitiated, megadrought is part of the global warming industry. Along with hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, rain, puddles, 40 mph winds, meteor showers, etc. The terrible megadrought disaster will arrive any moment with the complete and sudden cessation of all rainfall west of the Mississippi River. The megadrought, directly caused by CO2 emissions generated by greedy private corporations (especially Monsanto) and greedy, nasty, murdering corporate farms, will last thousands of years. Everyone on Earth will die a horrible, lingering death. And develop dry, itchy skin.

Humanity has only a slim chance to survive, and only if we listen to and heed the warnings and advice offered by government-funded scientists to, well, to do whatever the government tells us to do. As soon as they come up with a plan. Which will be soon. Any day now.

How do we know that this awful calamity is looming on the near horizon? Well, the evidence is right there for everyone to see, lodged in the same faulty data that gave us the “hockey stick” global warming graph and allowed us to just barely survive the catastrophic heat wave we’ve been suffering while the climate cooled over the last 18 years.

Hockey stick

The famous hockey stick was a graph produced in 2002 by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and his conspirators colleagues, purporting to show that the Earth suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago, at the onset of the industrial revolution (and coincidentally, the development of evil corporations and evil modern farming techniques). Clearly, said Mann and his conspirators colleagues, the cause was evil corporate carbon dioxide.

A pretty picture, but for a theory to be correct, it has to agree with the facts. “But look at my pretty graph,” said Mann. “It shows the warming! It’s absolute proof!”

You're all gonna die!!!

Not so fast, Mikey

Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick saw Mann’s graph and read his papers regarding anthropogenic global warming and decided that the problem was one they should be working on. The predictions were grim, after all, and if true, the world was going to need scientists to understand the problem and provide solutions to help mitigate the looming disaster.

But there was a problem. The graph and the theory just didn't add up. Puzzled by this, McIntyre and McKitrick asked Mann to provide his raw data and the mathematical models used to produce the findings. The data were allegedly in a set of more than 70 different climate records, and the statistical analytical method was allegedly a straightforward version of principal component analysis, or PCA. Mann refused to provide the data and models.

The Canadian scientists were able to obtain part of the program that Mann used, which was available on an FTP server. They found serious problems. Not only did the program not do conventional PCA, it actually weighted the data to provide a predetermined outcome.

Mann’s PCA program was designed to emphasize any data that would produce a hockey stick shaped outcome, and to suppress all data that did not. McIntyre and McKitrick checked the program by inputting meaningless test data that had no up or down trends, a routine check which is widely used to test statistical modeling procedures. From this flat, vanilla data Mann’s program produced a hockey stick graph.

As it turns out, Mann and his conspirators fellows wrote a program which ignored all data which would not produce a result showing sudden and catastrophic global warming beginning with onset of the industrial revolution. Mann’s clever program would produce a  hockey stick graph regardless of the data entered.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse.

McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, where it was extensively refereed, or “peer reviewed.” And rejected. They then published their paper on a web page, where honest scientists were shocked to find a laundry list of blatantly dishonest problems with the research.

Why was the McIntyre and McKitrick paper not published in Nature? It was peer reviewed, and the review reports were published. The reviewers found the paper valid and without scientific flaw. According to the editorial board, however, it wasn't “important enough” to publish.

This all happened more than a decade ago. In the mean time, instead of warming, the planet has cooled, even though CO2 levels have increased slightly.

Think about that.

Megadrought

Now comes a new report, from Drs. Ben Cook, Toby Ault and Jason Smerdon, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In a nutshell, the report predicts a looming megadrought across the Great Plains and Southwest. A drought of such monumental and catastrophic proportions that everyone will probably die. Unless we do what the government says. When they get around to it.

The report comes complete with a hockey stick of its own, too. Generated largely from the very same data used by Mann and his fellows, and almost certainly using the same flawed and dishonest PCA tools. You can’t actually see the data or the modeling software, of course. But once you've waded through their paper and looked at the graph, you can pretty well rest assured that you know what’s going on here.

Look familiar?

What is it with these guys?

Malfunction

This isn't about climate change. It’s about lying, cheating and stealing. It’s about a group of so-called scientists who have made a conscious decision to lie about what they do and to publish fraudulent findings. It’s also about the government and the media/entertainment complex who are partners in the scam. And ultimately, it’s about the people who allow themselves to be lied to.

Climate change is, of course, real. We live on a dynamic planet with a dynamic climate. Our climate has never not been changing. We rely on science and government funding of science to help us navigate the changing climate. Science and the government aren't delivering. Well, not delivering the truth anyway.

Neither science nor our nation are designed to be abused this way. What are you going to do about it?