Left-wing Ridiculouness

Forget the Naysayers, Follow Your Own Instincts!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment
It’s no coincidence that brilliant creative minds are rarely witnessed. Steve Jobs, Tina Fey, Banksy. Mavericks and renegades — telling their stories, spilling their guts, and divulging themselves for our progress, our enlightenment, and our entertainment. Like us, they feel the heat of failure, defeat, humiliation, and financial ruin, but they do it anyway. They do whatever it takes to put their lives and ideals into their work. They have to. And the world loves them even more for it.

Most folks never have a chance of even knowing the power of their talents and gifts. Others lack the confidence, or possibly ignorance, necessary to share their ideas with the world — afraid to stick their heads out of the foxhole for fear of the potshots from naysayers and hole-pokers. We’re scared, so we stop trusting ourselves. This creates a bad habit — instead of looking inside for an answer, we ask “What do THEY want?”  Thus, we pander. We regurgitate standard, acceptable levels of crap — mediocrity with a laugh track.

dumb_earth_550

Like individuals, companies are risk averse. It’s in their business plan to be so. The commercial world or the larger society generally accepts greatness only AFTER witnessing it in others. One unique voice airs a beautiful work first, then it becomes socially acceptable. Case in point: Anthony Bourdain’s bestseller Kitchen Confidential was written purely out of love of his craft. His work was an expression of himself. His business model was, literally, “I don’t give a shit.”

Bourdain wrote only for cooks, and thought he would be excommunicated from the restaurant business for it. But, because he told the ugly truth, in his own voice, in his own aggressive style — on his subsequent book tour, he was received by cooks and chefs the world over with the phrase, “You wrote my life, man.”

book_550

We recognize that any truly new idea is met with fear, will never pass “marketing” or the Nielsens or Hollywood or even the Joneses. But the few brave ones, both companies and individuals, who risk comfort and safety for a chance at beauty or being able to move someone — they have a potential to gain so much more. Loyalty, respect, and awe.

And that’s why we must push ourselves to ask the harder question. Not “what do THEY want?”, but “what do WE have to say?” We must do the work of looking inside ourselves to find what is beautiful and tremendous within us and summon the courage to put this out. As James Joyce said, “in the particular lies the universal.”

The meaning of all this is that you, your opinions and intelligence and history matter. But you gotta do the work. To pull from the most personal areas of your life, your opinions, your stories, your experiences — by doing this you create something meaningful not only to yourself but to those who see it. The work, the fear and struggle, the constant worry of whether your gift is good enough, the small critics both inside and out? Fuck ‘em. The world awaits your gift. Isn’t that what life is all about?

love_550

Spain’s Failed Green Energy Experiment….Another Case Study from Institute for Energy Research

/ 1957chev / 4 Comments

Spain’s Green Energy Experiment

AUGUST 27, 2014

The Institute for Energy Research released today a case study on Spain’s failed green energy policies. This is the second entry in a series of case studies on Europe’s green energy disaster (click here to read IER’s case study on Germany).

For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow. However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent. 

IER’s study found:

  • In 2000, Spain began a new program to subsidize renewable energy with the passage of its “Promotion Plan for Renewable Energies.”
  • Spain’s feed-in tariffs have created a “rate deficit” amounting to $41 billion (about $850 per person).
  • In 2011, Spain’s domestic electricity prices (including taxes) amounted to 29.46 U.S. ¢/kilowatt-hour (kWh), nearly 2.5 times more than U.S. prices.
  • Spain’s electricity prices increased by 92 percent from 2005 to 2011.
  • Rising energy costs hit low-income Spaniards the hardest–driving them into energy poverty
  • Despite myriad renewable subsidies and mandates, Spain’s CO2 emissions increased by 34.5% from 1994-2011.

Click here to read the full case study.

Click here to read IER’s previous study on Spain by Dr. Gabriel Calzada Alvarez.

You Cannot Trust the Climate Alarmists. They Have an Agenda & They’re Willing to Lie!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

But….but….the truth won’t scare the masses!

 

Who’s going to be sacked for making-up global

warming at Rutherglen?

by on August 27, 2014 

HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved.

Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.

Surely its time for heads to roll!

The temperature record at Rutherglen has been corrupted by managers at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

 

Some background: Near Rutherglen, a small town in a wine-growing region of NE Victoria, temperatures have been measured at a research station since November 1912. There are no documented site moves. An automatic weather station was installed on 29th January 1998.

Temperatures measured at the weather station form part of the ACORN-SAT network, so the information from this station is checked for discontinuities before inclusion into the official record that is used to calculate temperature trends for Victoria, Australia, and also the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The unhomogenized/raw mean annual minimum temperature trend for Rutherglen for the 100-year period from January 1913 through to December 2013 shows a slight cooling trend of 0.35 degree C per 100 years. After homogenization there is a warming trend of 1.73 degree C per 100 years. This warming trend is essentially achieved by progressively dropping down the temperatures from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year of 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.

There is absolutely no justification for doing this.

This cooling of past temperatures is a new trick* that the mainstream climate science community has endorsed over recent years to ensure next year is always hotter than last year – at least for Australia.

There is an extensive literature that provides reasons why homogenization is sometimes necessary, for example, to create continuous records when weather stations move locations within the same general area i.e. from a post office to an airport. But the way the method has been implemented at Rutherglen is not consistent with the original principle which is that changes should only be made to correct for non-climatic factors.

In the case of Rutherglen the Bureau has just let the algorithms keep jumping down the temperatures from 1973. To repeat the biggest change between the raw and the new values is in 1913 when the temperature has been jumped down a massive 1.8 degree C.

In doing this homogenization a warming trend is created when none previously existed.

The Bureau has tried to justify all of this to Graham Lloyd at The Australian newspaper by stating that there must have been a site move, its flagging the years 1966 and 1974. But the biggest adjustment was made in 1913! In fact as Bill Johnston explains in today’s newspaper, the site never has moved.

Surely someone should be sacked for this blatant corruption of what was a perfectly good temperature record.

———-

Climate records contradict Bureau of Meteorology by Graham Lloyd, 27th August
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-records-contradict-bureau-of-meteorology/story-e6frg6xf-1227037936046

The story is behind a paywall. But if you don’t already have a subscription perhaps its time… this could just be the biggest story of the year.

** There are a lot of tricks that climate science managers have implemented over the years to fix the temperature record; that is fix it so it shows global warming. “Trick” was the word Phil Jones, a leading United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientist, used to explain to his peers that, when constructing very long global temperature series using proxy data based on tree ring measurements that can extend back thousands of years, it was best to substitute thermometer data for this proxy data from about 1960 because the proxy data started to show cooling from about then. Indeed from about 1960 until 2002 the thermometer data mostly did show warming. But now even this instrumental record is starting to show cooling. Enter the relatively new trick of homogenization.

The Truth About Wind Turbines….A Victim’s Testimony!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment
Victims of industrial wind
 

We are “Victims of Industrial Wind” (which is also the name of our open Facebook group, with members from around the world).

We are the Therriens of Sheffield. Many already know our story. We own 50 acres abutting First Wind’s Sheffield project. We have spent more than 18 years living here, cultivating a beautiful sugar bush. Yes, we live off grid. Yes, we live near the Interstate. The interstate is quiet at night, unlike the wind turbines that make noise 24/7 more often than not. The Interstate also does not make a repetitive obnoxious noise that wakes you then keeps you awake, night after night.

We did not oppose the industrial wind power plant at any stage. From proposal to construction, we had no idea what to expect so we were not about to judge.

We never once harassed any employees working on the project nor with First Wind. Not until the project began operating, only when we experienced the noise first-hand, did we begin to understand and wonder just what we were facing. About six months in, we started to realize the project was affecting us. Less than one year in, everything started to add up for us, correlating the connection between the sounds and how we felt. We hardly could believe it was true until we started reading up on wind turbine syndrome. This syndrome is real, too darn real. The exact same symptoms are echoed worldwide.

These facts about wind turbine noise and health have been known for a long time and totally ignored by our federal and state governments. These elected people who are in charge of protecting the public have chosen to blindly believe the big wind developers, while turning a deaf ear to towns and residents to be impacted for the good or bad by industrial power plants.

Health studies should have been done before big wind turbines were put close to people, but they weren’t. Instead we get literature reviews done by people with financial ties to the wind industry who claim there are no “direct” health effects. It has also been spread far and wide that anyone who opposes clean green energy (laugh) is a NIMBY (not in my back yard) or that people are only seeking financial gain by falsely claiming to being negatively impacted.

Positive outcome studies are funded by industrial wind, and they get to hand-pick their experts. The nonpositive studies are done by honest hard-working individuals who face public persecution and possibly the loss of their jobs if they go public with their negative findings.

Just ask Dr. Henrik Moller of Denmark, a highly respected academic noise researcher who was fired after exposing the Danish government’s role in covering up the health risks caused by wind turbine noise pollution. Kind of says a lot right there, doesn’t it?

Even with all this information, no precautions were taken to prepare in advance to rectify any problems that may arise. Various problems have arisen, and yet they are still largely ignored because no one knows how to solve any problems pertaining to industrial wind power plants. We hear “this is all new to us.” Well, it is old hat to us.

The Public Service Board has held hearings and workshops to hear both sides of the story. Now you would be led to believe that both sides would be given equal time to be heard. No, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The developers’ side has gotten most of the time while attending victims have to sit and be further insulted and mistreated in the process and are lucky to speak at all. We attended the PSB’s Morrisville workshop and will never participate in another unless it is to protest. It was that much of an insult.

So here we are nearly three years into this nightmare and no closer to a resolution then we were on day one. We had asked First Wind to buy us out for $150,000. This prompted a meeting where we were told of a possible option to pay us $45,000 for our house and two acres, but it was not an official offer. This is what we were told: “It’s what I think I can do so it’s not as though it’s First Wind’s thing.”

Yeah, right, the head of safety and compliance out of Boston is not about to stick his neck out with talk of a “possible option” if he hadn’t already had some kind of approval. We expected to be low-balled but not to this extreme.

It seems they are well schooled in the art of approaching a town, making promises that the project will cause no harm — while quietly buying/paying off select home/land owners because they know there will be harm. The paid-off residents have signed nondisclosure agreements so they cannot say one word against the project. The developer then sits back after construction and waits for surrounding residents to become so desperate to move they will sell at almost any price. Then try to act like a good neighbor by offering a possible option at a ridiculously low insulting price. And they wanted us to sign a nondisclosure for this pittance.

Luann Therrien lives in Sheffield.

Liberal Government Won’t Put a Wind Project Near Their Home in Toronto!!!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Ontario Place Grounds Would be Perfect For A Wind Project!

Bow Lake makes wind farm fight tough: MILLS 

By Tom Mills, Sault Star

Saturday, August 23, 2014 

With a government that continues to stack the procedural and legal deck against those who oppose the intrusion of wind farms on their neighbourhoods, you might expect to see turbines almost everywhere.

But it would take a sharp eye to spot one anywhere near the GTA. Wind-energy-watching is much easier in Algoma, Bruce and Chatham-Kent, which house about a third of Ontario’s turbines.

In a past column I mentioned the Toronto waterfront, where offshore wind turbines were seriously proposed. Then a Liberal government moratorium in 2011 put an end to the foolish notion of locating green energy generation where it might be consumed.

I’ve also suggested turbines be put in shopping malls, industrial parks and other places of large-scale ugliness within the bounds of the Greater Toronto Area.

One reader came up with the very feasible idea of lining Highway 400 with turbines from Barrie to Canada’s Wonderland.

Last week I found a couple of new prime locations: the Niagara Escarpment and the quaint main street of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Both seem to have wind in abundance.

Now NOTL, whose strict bylaws preserving the character of the historic village were strong enough to give a McDonalds sign fallen arches, would break out the 1812 muskets at the idea of blades whooshing o’er the fudge shoppes and inns.

And wine country doubtless would sour at the idea of blinking red lights festooning the limestone ridge like a strand of tacky Christmas lights.

But could they do much about it? I doubt it.

Preposterous, you say?

Well, a ruling last month by an environment ministry review panel on a wind farm north of Sault Ste. Marie makes it more daunting for anyone anywhere in Ontario to oppose a wind farm.

That panel shot down attempts by seasonal resident James Fata and others to block installation of turbines on a scenic hill area near the Lake Superior coast, the Bow Lake wind farm near Montreal River.

In the process, it pared down the grounds anyone could use to oppose a wind farm.

Both the approval and appeal processes set up by Ontario’s MOE already were heavily weighted against wind farm opponents.

As the tribunal’s decision notes, “An appellant is required to prove . . . that a project will cause the harm,” not just raise “the potential for harm.” No onus on the developer.

That seems akin to the government allowing pharmaceutical companies to dump drugs on the market and then requiring consumers to conduct scientific studies proving them to be unsafe.

And a tribunal is severely limited as to what reasons it can allow an opponent to use to object to a wind farm. None of that “scenic beauty” stuff for our ministry, even though this particular tribunal granted that the Superior landscape is “iconic.”

But the tribunal narrowed things even more by chopping references to property devaluation, economic impact on the tourism industry and a “prejudiced and unilateral consultation process” from the appeal.

That left Fata et al trying to prove turbines cause indisputably serious harm to human health, something many others have tried and failed, or latching on to an animal species that would be seriously and irreversibly harmed, in this case some little brown bats.

Evidence at the hearing suggested while turbines would doom a whole bunch of little brown bats, there are plenty more little brown bats where those came from.

And the tribunal rejected arguments by people such as adventurer Joanie McGuffin that the visual and social impacts of wind turbines on a natural landscape so striking as to have been featured by the historic Group of Seven artists could result in human health consequences.

So I’d say that leaves folks in Niagara with not too many weapons in their arsenal if some incentive-hungry developer proposed a wind farm.

Scenic beauty? Forget it. Historical significance? Nope. Tourist industry? Not likely.

About all that could stop a wind farm on NOTL’s Queen Street or along the escarpment is the fact that those places lie in the Greater Toronto Area’s back yard, much beloved of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.

Yep. That should do it.

Email tom.mills@sunmedia.ca to contact Tom Mills. Comment at saultstar.com.

 

People of Scotland are Tired of Excuses, They Are Demanding Justice for Wind Turbine Victims!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Farms Turn Scottish Highland Homes Into Sonic Torture Traps

August 23, 2014 by  

when-is-wind-energy-noise-pollution

An ill wind blows as the surge of turbines stirs fears of silent danger to our health
Scottish Express
Paula Murray
 August 2014

TENS of thousands of Scots may be suffering from a hidden sickness epidemic caused by wind farms, campaigners have warned.

The Sunday Express can reveal that the Scottish Government has recently commissioned a study into the potential ill effects of turbines at 10 sites across the country.

More than 33,500 families live within two miles of these 10 wind farms – which represent just a fraction of the 2,300 turbines – already built north of the Border.

Hundreds of residents are now being asked to report back to Holyrood ministers about the visual impacts, and effects of noise and shadow flickers from nearby wind farms.

Campaigners fear that many people do not realise they are suffering from ailments brought on by infrasound – noise at such a low frequency that it cannot be heard but can be felt.

One such person is Andrew Vivers, an ex-Army captain who has suffered from headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, raised blood pressure and disturbed sleep since Ark Hill wind farm was built near his home in Glamis, Angus.

Mr Vivers, who served almost 10 years in the military, said the authorities had so far refused to accept the ill effects of infrasound despite it being a “known military interrogation aid and weapon”.

He said: “When white noise was disallowed they went on to infrasound. If it is directed at you, you can feel your brain or your body vibrating. With wind turbines, you don’t realise that is what’s happening to you.

“It is bonkers that infrasound low frequency noise monitoring is not included in any environmental assessments. It should be mandatory before and after turbine erection.”

He is raising concerns about an “acknowledged and unexplained increase of insomnia, dizziness and headaches in Dundee”, where two large wind turbines have been operating since 2006. Mr Vivers, 59, said all medical explanations of his own sudden health issues had been ruled out and it was more than 12 months before he was convinced of the link to the wind farm.

He said: “I was getting these headaches and dizziness and just not sleeping, but I was putting it all down to all sorts of other things. A couple of times I was walking on the hills around the house with my dogs and got a really bad dizzy spell.

“I actually had to sit down for a few minutes and while I was sitting down wondering what on earth was wrong with me, I did notice the wind was coming straight from the turbines.” Mr Vivers said he has also witnessed an “incredible number” of dead hares on the moors around Ark Hill and believes they may have succumbed to “internal haemorrhaging and death” as a result of the turbines.

He added: “If this coming winter is going to be anything like the last and with the plans to build a second wind farm much closer to us, I think we’ll have to sell our home and move elsewhere.”

The 10 sites under the microscope in the new survey include one in Dunfermline, where almost 23,000 households are nearby, and Little Raith near Lochgelly, Fife, where there are nearly 9,000 households.

The others are Achany in Sutherland, Baillie near Thurso, Caithness, Dalswinton in Dumfriesshire, Drone Hill, near Coldingham, Berwickshire, Griffin in Perthshire, Hadyard Hill in Ayrshire, Neilston in Renfrewshire and West Knock, near Stuartfield, Aberdeenshire.

About 2,000 questionnaires have been sent to residents in a move that is understood to have caused tension between the Scottish Government and the renewable energy industry.

The “wind farm impacts study” is being managed by ClimateXChange, which has published information about the project online.

It says: “The research will use two sources of information: how local residents experience and react to visual, noise and shadow-flicker impacts, and how the predicted impact at the planning stage matches the impact when the wind farm is operating.

“The final report is due in autumn 2014. It will inform the Scottish Government’s approach to planning policy on renewables and good practice on managing the impact of wind farms on local residents.”

One of the contractors involved in the project is Hoare Lea Acoustics, an international firm which specialises in measuring noise and vibration from wind farms.

However, Susan Croswaithe, the UK spokeswoman for campaign group European Platform Against Windfarms, said the study would be “little more than a box ticking exercise”.

She added: “On the face of it, it does look like a step in the right direction, but can we really trust it? My issue is that it is not independent enough.

“Our website is full of examples of people not being listened to.

“We have two very large wind farms near us in Ayrshire, Arecleoch and Mark Hill – 60 turbines and 28 turbines.

“If people in my area have noticed they are feeling better at the moment but do not understand why, it may be because the turbines have been switched off while they do maintenance on the grid.”
Scottish Express

Andrew Viviers

Andrew Viviers makes the following – perfectly reasonable – observation about noise testing:

“It is bonkers that infrasound low frequency noise monitoring is not included in any environmental assessments. It should be mandatory before and after turbine erection.”

The idea of “testing” for the impacts from turbine noise and vibration without including infrasound and low-frequency noise is “bonkers”, indeed. Dr Mariana Alves-Pereira – who has been studying low-frequency noise impacts with her research group for 30 years, certainly thinks so (see our post here).

The noise standards – written by the wind industry – rely on the dB(A) weighting and, therefore, deliberately ignore the vast bulk of the sound energy produced by turbines – which pervades homes as infrasound and in frequencies that cause sleep deprivation and other adverse health effects (see our post here).

The standards not only ignore infrasound, but the South Australian EPA’s noise guidelines even ludicrously assert that infrasound was a feature of earlier turbine designs that is not present at “modern wind farms”. SA’s EPA – despite being incapable of following its own guidelines when it came to noise testing at Waterloo – managed to find infrasound present inside neighbouring homes at a very modern wind farm, that started operation in 2010 (see our posts here and here). For a great little summary on wind turbine generated infrasound and its adverse affects on health, check out this video of Alex Salt, laying it out, in no uncertain terms.

blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/5dcfb8f1-40b5-4c86-91c6-bcc4ee86c9f4

Given the work of Professor Salt (outlined in the video) and Steven Cooper’s findings at Cape Bridgewater (see our post here) “the recent unexplained increase of insomnia, dizziness and headaches in Dundee”, referred to by Andrew Viviers is not so difficult to explain at all.

The direct link between very low-frequency turbine noise, sleep disturbance and annoyance was well and truly established by Neil Kelley & Co over 25 years ago (see posts here and here and here). And the wind industry knew all about it (see our post here).

Well, Highlanders – it seems like the right time to grab your Claymores and bring your political betters to account.

brave_shield3

For All the People Who Have Asked or Wondered about the “Copycat” website….

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

There are 2 people that resigned from my Mothers Against Wind Turbines group, who are trying to run their own group, and are using my name. I am delighted that they are starting their own group, but disgusted, that they are trying to steal my name.  My trademarked name.  It is the name I came up with, while looking for a way to protect my son, as well as help other families protect their children.  My story is on my blog, but surprisingly enough, they have put it on their mothersagainstturbines.com website, and refuse to remove it, even though I have asked them repeatedly, to do so.  I want everyone to know, I do NOT endorse what these people are doing, I have no involvement with these people, and I am working toward resolving this issue.

I want to thank everyone who has been patient while this mess gets straightened out.          Shellie Correia

The Original Mother Against Wind Turbines

 

  • ® r for a registered trademark. The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.

 

 

*****IMPORTANT*****

It has been brought to my attention, that the people using my name, Mothers Against Wind Turbines, with inc stuck at the end of it, are soliciting the people of West Lincoln, for money.  These are the same individuals that resigned, and then snuck around, behind my back, and took all of the money out of my MAWT account.  Thousands of dollars that had been earned by myself, and some supporters from the community.  They had NO right to do this.  I would highly recommend that any donations toward the wind fight go directly to:   http://swearontario.wix.com/swearontario     Thank you,   Shellie Correia

People should Learn to “Adapt”, Rather than Playing the “Blame Game”!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Spot the Portion on the Map, caused by ‘climate change’

Posted on August 18, 2014 by

From “The Hill”, even California Democrats aren’t buying the climate BS Obama and Holdren are selling on drought: (h/t to WUWT reader “Green Sand”)

Voters don’t hear the words “climate change” when Democrats in competitive races in California explain what’s causing the worst drought in the state’s history.

President Obama has repeatedly blamed global warming for episodes of severe weather, including wildfires and droughts in the Golden State, but Democrats seeking to unseat Republicans in the hard-hit Central Valley region are balking at that argument.

The drought is an issue in three of the five closest House races in California, but Democrats are opting against drawing a direct link between the drought and climate change.

“The way folks talk about the drought out here is: ‘We have a problem, let’s fix the problem,’” said Amanda Renteria, a Democrat challenging Rep. David Valadao (R).

“Climate change doesn’t really belong in the question, or answer,” said Renteria, one of her party’s best hopes of gaining a House seat this fall.

California’s drought is in its third year, with no signs of ending. It’s expected to cost the state $2.2 billion this year.

Renteria’s race against Valadao in California’s 21st District is smack dab in the middle of the agriculture-heavy Central Valley, where the drought is the single biggest issue for voters.

Renteria isn’t a climate skeptic and thinks there is something “going on” with climate change.
 
But her campaign isn’t focused on pinning the drought to the effects of global warming.

It’s focused on how federal and state officials were unprepared to deal with the drought, and how Central Valley lawmakers should have pushed Congress to take steps to build water storage infrastructure to help farmers.

“The fact that we need an answer, and needed an answer for years — this has been coming, we knew it was coming — adds to questions about who our leaders are, and what is going on in Congress,” she said.
 
Other Democrats in California districts impacted by the drought are tacking a similar tack.

OK, spot the portion caused by climate change:

California_drought_timeline

The paper:

North American drought: Reconstructions, causes, and consequences, Cook et al. 2007

PDF here: NADrought

Figure 10 is the source of the above graph:

Cook_etal_2007_fig10

Fig. 10. Long-term aridity changes in the West (A) as measured by the percent area affected by drought (PDSIb−1) each year (B) (redrawn from Cook et al., 2004). The four most significant ( pb0.05) dry and wet epochs since AD 800 are indicated by arrows. The 20th century, up through 2003, is highlighted by the yellow box. The average drought area during that time, and that for the AD 900–1300 interval, are indicated by the thick blue and red lines, respectively. The difference between these two means is highly significant ( pb0.001).

 

The Lefties Have Gone Too Far. We Need a Return to Sanity!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Hate Speech: U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

Written by 

 
Hate Speech: U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

 

A 2009 poll found that more than a third of British teenagers couldn’t identify some of Winston Churchill’s most famous words. Now it turns out that this deficit just might save them from jail.

In a shocking application of hate-speech law, Paul Weston (shown), co-founder and leader of the Liberty GB party and candidate for member of the European Parliament, was arrested on Saturday and now faces a possible two years in prison. His crime?

He quoted one of the 20th century’s most famous Englishmen, that WWII hero Churchill.

 

As Liberty GB reported at its website:

Mr Weston, a candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, was arrested on 26 April in front of Winchester Guildhall for quoting in public a passage critical of Islam written by Winston Churchill, using a megaphone.

He spent several hours in a cell at Winchester Police Station, after which the original charge of breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice was dropped and Mr Weston was “re-arrested” for a Racially Aggravated Crime, under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, which carries a potential prison sentence of 2 years.

He was then fingerprinted and obliged to submit to DNA sampling, following which he was bailed with a return date to Winchester Police on May 24th.

Had the woman who complained to the police made an official statement, Mr Weston would not have been released last night, but fortunately for him she did not.

The case is now being presented to the Crown Prosecution Service. If the CPS decides to prosecute, then Mr Weston will be arrested, awaiting trial, when he presents himself to the police on May 24th.

The “offending” words were taken from Churchill’s book The River War, penned in 1899 while he served as a British army officer in Sudan. It is a passage oft-quoted on the Internet:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.

Yet publicly voicing such sentiments in Britain is now often viewed as “racial or religious harassment.” What this means is that were Churchill alive today he could, conceivably, be arrested by the U.K. government simply for espousing his beliefs.

Some may assume Churchill’s fame would save him, but it was no shield for Paul Weston. Nor has it helped talk-show host Michael Savage, the most well-known American victim of British hate-speech law. In 2009, Dr. Savage was placed on a list of people banned from entering the U.K. along with hardened criminals and terrorists. The British government extended this ban in 2011, saying the commentator had not “provided any acceptable evidence to show his repudiation of those unacceptable behaviours.” Note that these “behaviours” amounted to simply voicing opinion.

As for opinion, Liberty GB finds itself an outlier in U.K. politics, describing its ideology as overriding “the conventional dichotomy (and terminology) of Left and Right,” as it rejects “the notion of Britain as a global no-man’s land upon which any of the world’s teeming millions may lay claim” and espouses “Christian ethics and Western civilization” but also is progressive “in areas such as women’s equality and animal welfare.”

But it’s questioning how wide-scale Muslim immigration affects English welfare that can really get you in trouble in today’s U.K. As to this, columnist Mark Steyn recently wrote, recalling how, a decade earlier, he began a piece “with a reader’s recollection of the first weeks of the Salman Rushdie fatwa” (hat tip: American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson):

A couple of years back, I mentioned the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and received a flurry of lively e-mails. It was Valentine’s Day 1989, you’ll recall, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his extraterritorial summary judgment on a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims were marching through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed.

A reader in Bradford recalled asking a West Yorkshire officer on the street that day why the various “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to “play it cool”. The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to “F— off, or I’ll arrest you.”

In his recent piece, Steyn added:

And so it has gone, ever more openly, across the ensuing quarter-century. Point out problematic aspects of Islam, and the British state’s response is “F— off, or I’ll arrest you.” Her Majesty’s Constabulary do not yet police their charges quite as strictly as the Saudi mutaween, but they’re getting there: The day after Drummer Lee Rigby was hacked to death in broad daylight on the streets of London, a march in support of the “Help for Heroes” military charity led to a five-hour standoff between marchers and police, ending with the arrest of Lee Cousins for “mocking the Islamic prayer ritual” by getting down on his hands and knees outside the pub. He was fined 600 pounds.

When was the last time someone was fined 600 quid for mocking any bit of Christian ritual?

And British citizens are noticing this double standard, though not many dare voice opposition too publicly. As a poster going by the name “John” wrote under the Liberty GB article about Weston’s arrest:

How many times did the racist who butchered Lee Rigby violate these [hate-speech] laws without fear of arrest? He was even involved in a scuffle with the police. People who pretend these “efforts” [at enforcement] are neutral are racist liars. These are in fact classic laws of racist colonialism, where the natives are forbidden to criticize the occupying power.

Even the supposed anonymity of the Internet may not offer protection for long, however. Swedes who criticized immigration on the Web were recently tracked down via their IP addresses and persecuted, while the Swedish government has just enacted a new law making it easier to prosecute “net haters.” And now two Democrat legislators in the United States have proposed the “Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014,” which would empower the federal government to scour the Internet for “hate speech.”