Six Thousand Times as much Pollution as All the Cars in the World.

Did you know that just 16 large sea going cargo ships can produce as much pollution as all the world’s cars. Think about that! There are 100,000 of these ships on the sea! And none are restricted from burning dirty sulphur laden fuel oil that is not allowed as fuel by others. And that means they produce 6,250 times as much pollution as ALL the cars in the world! But I only hear about those Hummers being gas hogs. (Read more from riverjournal.com)

UN climate body admits ‘mistake’ on Himalayan glaciers

The vice-chairman of the UN’s climate science panel admits that it made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included the date in its 2007 assessment of climate impacts.

A number of scientists have recently disputed the 2035 figure, and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele told BBC News that it was an error and would be reviewed.

But he said it did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.

The issue, which BBC News first reported on 05 December, has reverberated around climate websites in recent days.

Some commentators maintain that taken together with the contents of e-mails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, it undermines the credibility of climate science.

. . . .

Meanwhile, in an interview with the news agency AFP, Georg Kaser from the University of Innsbruck in Austria – who led a different portion of the AR4 process – said he had warned that the 2035 figure was wrong in 2006, before AR4’s publication.

“It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing,” he told AFP in an interview.

No consequences for lying borrowers

The government shouldn’t reward liars. But that’s the effect of changes to the Obama administration’s failing program to help homeowners modify their mortgages.

Until recently the rules were clear: if you grossly understated your income to qualify for the program, you had to restart the loan modification process. It made sense. After all, we got into this housing mess partly because too many people were dishonest about how much they made.

Fast forward to today. The federally funded Home Affordable Modification Program was aimed at getting banks to rework mortgages for homeowners in order to slow the pace of foreclosures. The government set a goal of modifying up to 4 million mortgages over the next three years.

The program isn’t working like it’s supposed to. Since March, just 31,000 homeowners have won permanent relief. One big reason why is that lenders are doing what they should have been doing all along — requiring things like proof of income.

How’s the government responding? By letting homeowners who fudge their income numbers off the hook with little more than a wink and a nod. (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

Rewarding irresponsible people is horrible economics, not to mention morality, but in D.C., political expediency rules all else.

Flight 253 passenger contradicts FBI story

This is getting to be old news, but I think it’s important. Inconsistencies often appear in the big sensational stories, especially the scary ones which justify our loss of liberty in the name of security.

[Kurt Haskell:] Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.

Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.

Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?

However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained “had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight.”

. . . .

For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so
called “sharp dressed man.” For those of you who haven’t read my
account, it involves a sharp dressed “Indian man” attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed “Sudanese refugee” (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called “Sudanese reefugee” later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures”. (Read more from mlive.com)

Don’t tell Fox “News” about this. To them, the important thing about this story is the possibility of Iran’s involvement, and us remaining afraid.

Construction in West Bank settlements booming despite declared freeze

Despite the construction freeze, dozens of settlements in the West Bank are experiencing a building boom, even on the eve of another visit to the region by U.S. envoy George Mitchell to try to restart talks for a final settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Construction is being carried out mostly to the east of the separation fence; it began shortly after warrants were issued on November 26 freezing construction.

Haaretz toured the area on Wednesday and witnessed work being carried out in the Barkan and Ariel industrial zones, as well as the construction of housing at Ariel, Elkana North, Peduel and Kfar Tapuah. A sign at Kfar Tapuah announced plans for the construction of 65 new housing units. Israel patrols were evident, but not inspectors of the Civil Administration enforcing the construction ban.
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In all the sites mentioned there is evidence of heavy equipment preparing the ground for construction or for the creation of suitable infrastructure. (Read more from haaretz.com)

Remember, they hate us because they are evil fanatics. </sarcasm>

Ron Paul on Rachel Maddow Show

What’s most interesting to me about this interaction is the way Maddow resolutely pushes the left vs. right narrative. I don’t presume to know if it’s witting or unwitting, but I do thing that sometimes the American people are sold the illusion of opposites where there is no difference. BOTH parties supported expanding our wars. BOTH parties supported transferring massive amounts of wealth to our politically elite banks.

Kudos to Ron Paul for refusing to accept the illusion.

Jobs Jobs Jobs and the Broken Window Fallacy

This video points to the same bit of government hypocrisy as the important broken window fallacy When money is taken away from people and spent on either unproductive jobs or the repair of a broken window, it is not a net gain for society. This principle comes up often.

Hard to believe this bullshit is in bloomberg, but here it is:

The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.