The Onion reports that the star in the center of our Solar System has an influence on the Earth’s temperatures:

Scientists Trace Heat Wave To Massive Star At Center Of Solar System. Groundbreaking new findings announced Monday suggest the record-setting heat wave plaguing much of the United States may be due to radiation emitted from an enormous star located in the center of the solar system. Scientists believe the star, which they have named G2V65, may in fact be the same bright yellow orb seen arcing over the sky day after day, and given its extreme heat and proximity to Earth, it is likely not only to have caused the heat wave, but to be responsible for every warm day in human history.

I always think that the sun is the “slam-dunk” rebuttal to Climate Change fanatics. It goes like this:

Q: You think we understand how and why the Earth is warming, and can accurately model it?
A: Yes
Q: To do this, we must have a pretty good understanding of the major forces that effect the Earth’s climate, right?
A: Yes
Q: Do we understand how the Sun effects the Earth’s climate?
A: No [if they’re honest. If they say “yes” they’ve just proven themselves to be fools or liars.]
Q: And so?
A: Oh. Yes, that’s a bit of a problem isn’t it? I guess the science isn’t settled.

Sadly, there’s not enough intellectual honesty among Climate Change religionists for this to work in the real world.

Also from the Onion:

After months of heated negotiations and failed attempts to achieve any kind of consensus, President Obama turned 50 years old Thursday, drawing strong criticism from Republicans in Congress.

Cosplay meet Japanese high technology:

In a bit of science mixed with whimsy, a Japanese company has created a set of electromechanical cat ears that can be worn on the human head and manipulated with nothing but the mind.

Who else but the Japanese would invent something like that?

In April 2009, I wrote a detailed piece about some Global Warming ™ scare-mongering that was masquerading as a scientific article. I went so far as to investigate the references within the piece, and got stuck into one particular study that made lots of loud and scary claims about the billions of dollars of losses to farmers caused by Global Warming ™. What they actually concluded was that Global Crop yields have increased, and increase carbon dioxide yields have been good for plant growth, but (they claimed) global yields should have increased by more than that, so any difference between the actual increase and the hypothetical increase counts as a loss.

Well, they’re at it again:

Lobell and his colleagues examined temperature and precipitation records since 1980 for major crop-growing countries in the places and times of year when crops are grown. They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels. The researchers found that global wheat production was 5.5 percent lower than it would have been had the climate remained stable, and global corn production was lower by almost 4 percent.

It reminds me of the time when I bought some shares for a dollar, and sold them again for $2 each, but they went up to $3 later. So I suffered a devastating loss of $1 per share. I don’t know how I ever can recover from this financial catastrophe.

Xinhua news reports:

The Mozambican capital Maputo is hosting a meeting of African, European and Latin American experts on climate change and its effects on the African continent… Participants of the meeting include experts from Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria Sierra Leon, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, England, Uruguay, Swaziland, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, the Comoros and Chad.

Because accumulating frequent flyer points is the number one hobby of Climate Change ™ scare-mongers.

The death of Bin Laden sure brought out the true colors of some characters in the western world. It’s good to know who is on the other side.

Who said this?

“When you show such insane disrespect to the president of your country, other countries think we’re idiots.”

Of course, the critical aspect is to decide if it is a Bush era quote, or an Obama era quote. “Insane disrespect to the president”? Sounds more like Bush years, doesn’t it? But no: this is Whoopi Goldberg, today. No memory, no sense of irony, no shame.

Can they really be this stupid? Or do they just think we are?

The bombing by NATO warplanes on the residence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is not an assassination attempt, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday. “It is certainly not the policy of the coalition, of this administration, to decapitate, or to effect regime change in Libya by force,” he told reporters.

[I know what I said in the last post … but how could I not comment on this?]

I’ve decided, for various reasons, that I’m going to limit my blog posting.

See you later (but only occasionally, if you stick around).

It’s ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand.

North Korea complains that South Korea is gagging free speech.

Gag on Freedom of Speech in S. Korea
Pyongyang, April 22 (KCNA) — The puppet Seoul Central District Court of south Korea sentenced Jo Jung Won, representative of the Internet media agency, to two-year prison term on the charge of violation of the “National Security Law”. The court charged him, who posted on Internet website articles and animations praising the Juche idea, the Songun politics of the DPRK, with “crime of spreading enemy-benefiting files”. Protesting against this ruling, Jo Jung Won expressed wrath at the absurd action of gagging on pressman’s freedom of thought and expression by invoking the NSL which has had no justification to exist any longer.

I wonder what would happen to a journalist in North Korea who praised the South?

A new website. It’s about time conservatives stopped forgetting their ideals when it comes to space policy. If we’d simply killed NASA and spent the same amount of money putting up prizes and incentives to private industry, I suspect we’d have a Mars colony by now.

Go here to read a story that’s just chock full of Global Warming ™ nuttiness, including Al Gore et al., but the highlight of the craziness came from Obama’s friend Van Jones:

“We burn death in our power plants without ceremony, and then we act shocked when having pulled death out of the ground and burned it,” Jones said. “We acted shocked when we get death from the skies in form of all the warming and death on our oceans in form of oil spills, and death in our choked lungs in the form of asthma and cancer. Let’s stop fueling our society based on death and destruction.”

I think he fancies himself as some kind of Biblical prophet. It certainly fits with the religious fervor of the Global Warming ™ crowd. Repent all ye sinners! Turn away from carbon dioxide, lest ye suffer the perils of divine anger. Hurry, all ye sinners, and embrace all loving Gaia, her holy solar panels, and her all blessed wind farms. Hmmmm. I wonder what he thinks of ethanol? After all, that involves the death of plants!

Seemingly more rational, but in fact no less inventive, we have this statement from Al Gore:

“Photovoltaic solar energy is just a couple of years away from being competitive with the average prices that’s charged for electricity that is on the grid right now.”

I’ll take that bet. Gore is a lot richer than me, but I’ll match him dollar for dollar up to any limit I can afford. Two years from now, I bet that solar power panels will not be able to generate power at the same price as traditional power (coal, gas, oil, nuclear), and no, Mr Gore, you don’t get to include government subsidies in the price. Of course, since it’s open and stated policy of environmentalists to increase energy costs, I guess what he’s really saying is that he and his buddies plan to drive up the price of all other forms of power generation, thus making solar power “competitive.” So let’s add another proviso: you don’t get to include government imposed penalties that artificially increase the costs of other forms of power generation.
[Via Tim Blair where he also has a Youtube clip of Van Jones.]

On a related note, from Australia we have this:

COMPANIES that install rooftop solar panels have warned the federal government the industry is on the verge of collapse because of a slump in the value of renewable energy certificates. The industry is calling for certainty so it can offer the panels at a set cost, not one that depends on the wilting price of the small-scale technology certificates. As the price of certificates falls, so do the rebates that keep down the consumer’s cost. In January it was $37; now it is $31

Even with government subsidies, it can’t keep afloat. Good luck with that two year prediction, Mr Gore.

The Chinese don’t seem to think much of the foreign policy skills of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

Gillard, a self-confessed diplomatic novice, will pale into the very ether when compared with her one-time leader, present foreign affairs minister and fluent mandarin speaker Kevin Rudd.

The Doctor’s companion, Sarah Jane Smith, has died. RIP.

What will K9 do now?

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

He ran as the anti-Bush… Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.

For a Left leaning newspaper, it was kind of surprising to read this, but I guess even idiots have to get something after it’s been rubbed in their face enough times. But it’s OK because it’s all Bush’s fault.

“Morphing into Bush was not a willful act,” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. “It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited.”

Got that? Obama didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t his fault. It was Bush’s fault! Of course, by that logic everything Bush did was Clinton’s fault, who can blame Bush snr. and he can blame Reagan who can blame … well, who other than Carter. Full circle. Cartobama!

The Australian Labor government, all hot under the collar about introducing a “carbon tax” to inhibit industrial growth are a pack of hypocrites.

FEDERAL public servants will spend at least $1.5 billion on airfares over three years despite attempts to reduce federal travel costs and bargain for bulk discounts, new tender documents show. The estimated domestic travel bill for the whole government between last July and June 2013 is $1.03 billion, enough for 975,000 business class return flights between Canberra and Melbourne. About $488 million is expected to go on international travel, excluding charter flights.

Reducing your “carbon footprint” is for the little people, not for the lords and masters.

The only reason Obama has ever looked good is because of a fawning media that asks him questions like, “please tell me why you’re so great?” When faced with questioning that was mildly pointed, he got annoyed and reprimanded the reporter. Handle the heat? He can’t even handle the lukewarm!