Once a believer in man's role in global warming -- now a scepticposted by MD
Here's an interesting list of genuine scientists who have reversed their thinking — usually as a result of facts and understandings of facts having changed over time. Such as with Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa:
"I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given," Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. "The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario," Veizer wrote. "It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved," Veizer explained. "The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,” he added.
In other words, the sun is making the temperatures rise and climates change. Add this short list of scientists to the over 17,000 scientists already publicly against the man-made theory, and, well, this is something far more than a movement of "deniers" (such a deplorable term).
My prediction is that within 15 years, something of the solar theory will be the commonly accepted position. The question is how much havoc the well-intentioned Al Gore and his band of alarmists will wreak before then — specifically, how much unnecessary governmental regulation the world's economies will have to unfortunately endure. And I should add, I do think some good will come of the alarmists: namely, to raise general awareness of environmental concerns within the wider world cultures. The means to this happening — hyperbole, apocalyptic prognostication, and (sometimes) straight-up false information — are of course very questionable, and I would prefer it didn't have to be this way. But, clearly, Gore and his band have won the debate in the mass media. And so, this too shall pass.
I read everything he writes (or try to!). His regular NRO feature, "Impromptus", often feels like a cozy chat amongst friends after Saturday night dinner; or reading a (hand-written) letter from a friend on a Sunday morning over a cup of rich coffee. Or simple, funny tours through the thought of a non-confrontational conservative.
Or something.
Anyway, his newest column contains something about the word "fascism" that I think is required reading by anyone intelligent. Find the original column here. Below is the relevant excerpt:
A word about the French: After Sarkozy's election, hundreds of university students in Paris "went on strike." What does it mean to go on strike, if you're a student? To refuse to attend class? Isn't that called hooky? And who cares, really, if these students go on "strike"? Whom are they injuring, other than themselves? (Actually, the less Parisian education they have, the better off they may be.)
But this is not so amusing: Student and other demonstrators shouted, "Sarko, fascist! The people will have your hide!" (A Reuters story is here.) That, I submit, is the authentic voice of Leninism. Note the reference to "the people," the presumption of speaking for "the people" - and this was after a free and fair election, in which "the people" really and truly spoke! It was the kind of election that these demonstrators would never permit, in their ideal society.
And "The people will have your hide." Yes, behind these shouters is Leninism, or Jacobinism, or whatever we choose to call it. We are reminded that it never dies; that civilization must be always on guard against it.
And then there is "fascist": "Sarko, fascist!" All of us who are conservative, or classically liberal, have had to be called fascist. It goes with the territory. And yet it's no fun. I have been called fascist since I was in college. And those who do it are either malicious or ignorant - sometimes, I guess, they are both (and what a brutal combination: malice and ignorance).
Ordinarily, it does no good to try to reason with people: Fascists are centralizers of power; we are decentralizers. Fascists are nationalizers of industry; we are free-marketeers. Fascists are collectivists; we are anti-collectivists. It is no use to say any of this: "Fascist" is an epithet used by mean or stupid people against those they dislike who are perceived to be "on the right." One result is that, when a real fascist comes along, there is no word left for him.
How odd that we who want to fight tirelessly against jihadists, or Islamofascists, are called "fascists"! How perverse that we liberal democrats, who wave the flag of universal human values, are called "fascists"! If you follow Jefferson and Locke and Lincoln and Churchill and Reagan - why, you are a fascist, at least according to some (to many).
But one must not whine. The other day, I brought up the "fascist" business with Roger Kimball, the conservative writer and editor. I said, "Are you ever called a fascist?" Brightly - for he is a bright kind of guy - he said, "Early and often!" In the past, I knew of Reagan-supporting Jews who had tattoos on their arms who were denounced as "fascists." (And when I say tattoos, I'm not talking about the biker kind.)
Anyway . . . an old, old story. But annoying all the same.
Every word is spot on. And the deeper implication unmistakable. It is found in this statement: "We are reminded that it never dies; that civilization must be always on guard against it." I'm reminded of one of my favorite definitions of creativity: finding new solutions to old problems. And that French student's views are a very old problem, even as dressed in seemingly evolved, progressive garb. But those clothes mask the truth.
The world, and not just the music world, lost a giant. Do your soul a favor and make his recording of Bach: Cello Suites Nos. 1-6 an enduring companion along your musical journey, if you already haven't.
Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich dies at 80
By Martin Steinberg and Maria Danilova
MOSCOW (AP) -- Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello with grace and verve - and lived his life offstage the same way. His death at age 80 takes away one of modern Russia's most compelling figures, admired both for his musical mastery and his defiance of Soviet repression.
Rostropovich stirred souls with playing that was both intense and seemingly effortless. He fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall.
In his last public appearance, at his birthday celebration in the Kremlin on March 27, Rostropovich was frail but still able to show his capacity for joy and generosity.
"I feel myself the happiest man in the world," he said. "I will be even more happy if this evening will be pleasant for you."
Spokeswoman Natalia Dollezhal confirmed Rostropovich's death, but would not immediately give details. The composer, who returned to Russia last month after years of living in Paris, had suffered from intestinal cancer.
After a funeral in Christ the Savior Cathedral on Sunday, he is to be buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, where the graves of his teachers Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev also lie. The arrangements echo the prestigious farewell this week that Russia accorded Boris Yeltsin, the first leader of post-Soviet Russia.
President Vladimir Putin called Rostropovich's death "a huge loss for Russian culture" and expressed condolences to his loved ones.
Rostropovich, who was known by his friends as "Slava," was considered by many to be the successor to Pablo Casals as the world's greatest cellist.
A bear of a man who hugged practically anyone in sight, he was an effusive rather than an intimidating maestro, a teacher who nurtured Jacqueline du Pre among many other great cellists.
"He was the most inspiring musician that I have ever known," said David Finckel, the Emerson String Quartet's cellist who studied with Rostropovich for nine years. "He had a way to channel his energy through other people, and it was magical."
Rostropovich's sympathies against the Communist Party leaders of his homeland started with the Stalin-era denunciations of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
Under Leonid Brezhnev's regime, Rostropovich and his wife, the Bolshoi Opera soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, sheltered the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their country house in the early 1970s.
"The passing of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow to our culture," Solzhenitsyn said Friday, according to his wife, Natalya.
After Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Rostropovich wrote an open letter protesting the official Soviet vilification of the author.
"Explain to me please, why in our literature and art (that) so often, people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word?" Rostropovich asserted in the letter that went unpublished.
The by the cellist and his wife for cultural freedom resulted in the cancellation of concerts, foreign tours and recording projects. Finally, in 1974, they fled to Paris with their two daughters. Four years later, their Soviet citizenship was revoked.
After arriving in the West, "he was like a little boy, laughing, shouting, pinching himself to make sure these really were the streets in Paris," the late violinist Yehudi Menuhin recalled in the 1996 book "Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later."
Still, exile took its toll on Rostropovich.
"When Leonid Brezhnev stripped us of our citizenship in 1978, we were obliterated," Rostropovich recalled in a 1997 interview in Strad magazine. "Russia was in my heart - in my mind. I suffered because I knew that until the day I died, I would never see Russia or my friends again."
Indeed, he was unable to attend Shostakovich's funeral in 1975.
But in 1989, as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, Rostropovich showed up with his cello and played Bach cello suites amid the rubble. The next year, his Soviet citizenship was restored, and he made a triumphant return to Russia to perform with Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 1977 to 1994.
When hard-line Communists tried to overthrow then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, Rostropovich rushed back to Moscow without a visa and spent days in the Russian parliament building to join those protesting the coup attempt.
In his early to mid-70s, he still had the energy of a middle-age man. He recorded the six Bach solo suites for the first time when he was 70. Five years later, he performed 16 concerts in 11 cities in 28 days, crossing the United States twice and logging nearly 10,000 miles.
Asked by The Associated Press during the 2002 tour about his sleep, he replied in his accented English: "Normally ... four hours for me (is) absolutely enough."
Finckel recalled that after the release of the Bach recordings, Rostropovich celebrated with a feast at a hotel until 2 a.m., then reserved a meeting room for 4 a.m. in order to practice his cello.
Ever the bon vivant with a big smile and twinkling blue eyes, he was known for his love of women and drink.
"He is a passionate man, and he has a real lust for life, and his marriage is stronger because of it," his daughter Olga said when asked by the Internet Cello Society in 2003 about his loves in life. "What they have together is very precious, and nothing can destroy it."
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was born March 27, 1927, in Baku in then Soviet Azerbaijan. His mother was a pianist. His grandfather and father, Leopold, were cellists. One memorable photo shows him as an infant cradled in his father's cello case. He started playing the piano at age 4 and took up the cello at about 7, later studying at the Moscow Conservatory.
"When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice," Rostropovich told Strad magazine.
He made his public debut as a cellist in 1942 at age 15, and gained wide notice in the West nine years later when the Soviets sent him to perform at a festival in Florence, Italy.
Life magazine reported the 24-year-old "stirred the audience to warm applause." The New York Times critic said his music was "first class. His tone was big, clean and accurate. ... His musical style seemed to be ardent and intense."
He developed close musical relationships with contemporary composers, inspiring some 100 works, from Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten - as well as from some not-so-famous composers.
During the 2002 interview with AP, he spoke about Shostakovich, who endured part of Nazi Germany's siege of Leningrad during World War II and battled for individual expression in Josef Stalin's Soviet Union.
Suffering is essential for art, Rostropovich said. "You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life. If he (is) only happy with his life, I think that he (does not fully) understand what is happiness."
Rostropovich's work for humanity didn't stop with the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1991, he and his wife established the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation to help improve health care for children in former Soviet states.
Rostropovich received numerous awards, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987 and a knighthood conferred on him that year by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on his 60th birthday.
On the cellist's 80th birthday, the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta published a letter Solzhenitsyn wrote in May 1973 after the author and his wife moved out of the Rostropoviches' house.
"Once more I repeat to you and Galiya my delight at your steadfastness, with which you endured all the oppression connected with me and did not allow me to feel," Solzhenitsyn wrote. "Once again I am grateful for the years of shelter with you, where I survived a time that was very stormy for me, but thanks to the exceptional circumstances I all the same wrote without interruption."
In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1955, survivors include their daughters, Olga and Elena.
GENEVA -- Centuries before it became a continent or country synonymous with wealth, power or freedom, ''America'' was coined by a Renaissance cartographer as the catchall designation for a world Europeans had yet to name or explore.
The name stuck despite its humble history and unsure start at a backwater French court. It celebrates the 500th anniversary of its baptism in the town of St. Die today, exactly a half-millennium after its first use on a world map.
Cartographer Martin Waldseemueller's map and accompanying 103-page book caused the hemisphere to be named for explorer Amerigo Vespucci instead of Christopher Columbus. Columbus believed to his death in 1506 that his four voyages had all been to Asia.
Prager, on Britain's lost greatness, and the U.S.posted by MD
Long excerpt from his new column, but worth the read:
The Labor government's decision was described well by the mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq. As reported by Reuters: "The mother of a 19-year-old British soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq at the weekend said she would be 'very shocked' if any of the detainees were paid for their stories. 'If you are a member of the military, it is your duty to serve your country,' Sally Veck, mother of Eleanor Dlugosz, told the Times. 'You should do your duty and not expect to make money by selling stories.'"
That pretty well sums up the revulsion many feel at the British government's decision.
The other current example of Great Britain's decline is the widely reported (in the UK) decision of schools in various parts of that country to stop teaching about the Holocaust in history classes. The reason?
As reported by the BBC, "Some schools avoid teaching the Holocaust and other controversial history subjects as they do not want to cause offence, research has claimed. Teachers fear meeting anti-Semitic sentiment, particularly from Muslim pupils, the government-funded study by the Historical Association said."
No comment necessary.
But a word of caution: If Great Britain can cease to be great in so short a time span, any country can. All you need is an elite that no longer believes in their country, that manipulates history texts to make students feel good about themselves, that prefers multiculturalism to its own culture, and that has abandoned its religious underpinnings. Sound familiar, America?
The Supreme Court yesterday released its decision on the case Massachusetts vs the EPA, which has to do with that government agency's authority to regular carbon dioxide emissions. In a 5-4 verdict, the Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act, and that the EPA has the authority to regulate its emissions.
I agree with this summary of the case at NRO. The Supreme Court ought not to be weighing in on this case, but rather the matter ought be handled by the Executive and Legislative branches. In other words, the question is not whether the plaintiffs are correct in their claims, but whether the Supreme Court has any business being involved:
In effect, the Green Supremes just signed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty regulating CO2 emissions, a treaty the elected U.S. Senate never ratified. In fact, though the Clinton Administration signed the pact in 1997, it didn't bother to submit it for ratification after a preliminary, 95-0 Senate vote declared the treaty unacceptable.
No matter, the justices have substituted their opinions for our elected bodies.
Follow the link, and it provides a link to the actual written opinions provided by the Court.
Man, this is pretty funny, and pitch perfect. Click the link, to read and, if you like, listen to Thompson talk. He's trained as an actor, so, you know, he can talk engagingly.
In weighing in (a bit) on the question of whether the Earth's warming is solar-induced, or man-induced, he points out that it seems several planets in our solar system are warming, too.
I'm a bit late to watching this BBC documentary. Nonetheless, I would strongly recommend everyone watch the documentary in its entirety (just over 73 minutes).
Click here to view. Before watching it, I was already skeptical that the argument that global warming is man-made is proven. This documentary supports my skepticism. The most interesting factoid presented in the film is this: carbon dioxide is not a "leading indicator" of climate change (this is the Gore claim); rather, CO2 is a "lagging indicator". In other words, carbon dioxide does not cause climate change; it is a result of climate change. This is technical point, but a crucial point, nonetheless.
And the doc supports the theory that climate change is due to the sun and the effect of solar activity on this planet — a point raised in this post.
All in all, in my more cynical moments, the whole "humans are warming the planet" argument is striking me more and more as crack for progressive anti-capitalists. A form of "pop-climatology" that is just as insidious as "pop-psychology", "pop-sociology", and "pop-mysticism".
That's the question implied by this NASA report. Its lead:
Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past.
"During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition."
Which reads, in part:
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
The world, and not just the music world, 
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