Tag: politics

Scientists baffled by unknown source of CFCs

1:10 pm

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have found that, despite their complete ban since 2007, one type of ozone-depleting CFCs are still being pumped into the atmosphere from some unknown source.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), which was once used in applications such as dry cleaning and as a fire-extinguishing agent, was regulated in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol along with other chlorofluorocarbons that destroy ozone and contribute to the ozone hole over Antarctica. Parties to the Montreal Protocol reported zero new CCl4 emissions between 2007-2012.

However, the new research shows worldwide emissions of CCl4 average 39 kilotons (about 43,000 U.S. tons) per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect. “We are not supposed to be seeing this at all,” said Qing Liang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published online in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl4 sources.”

That there seems to be an unknown source of CFCs suggests strongly that the entire theory of CFCs destroying the ozone layer is faulty. If CFCs were being produced naturally in the past then the ozone layer should not exist based on this theory. That it does exist says the CFCs are not harmful to it and were banned unnecessarily.

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German journalists arrested by police in Ferguson

1:43 am

Modern American free speech: Two German journalists were arrested by police in Ferguson for wanting to take photographs of a burned out gas station.

The comments of one of the journalists was especially shameful:

This was a very new experience. I’ve been in several conflict zones: I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I’ve been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I’ve met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.

Except for the arrests of journalists there, I have not posted much about the situation in Ferguson, mostly because no one at present really knows what happened and the subsequent behavior of everyone has been exceedingly disgusting and uncivilized, undeserving to my mind of much attention.

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“For the Israelis, this time is different.”

9:59 pm

“Hamas has exacted a high price from Israel these past weeks. But it has also awakened a sleeping giant. The question now is whether the Palestinian cause is furthered, or dramatically weakened, by the fear this war has created.”

Read the whole thing. Combine this new Israeli resolve with the public relations disaster this war has been for Hamas and it seems obvious that there will be no easy concessions from the Israelis in any negotiations for years. And that I consider a good thing: The Israelis, as well as a good part of the civilized world, have finally realized that there is no point negotiating with someone who wants to kill you. Only when the Palestinians and the Arabs finally honestly and sincerely accept the presence of Israel will there be any chance for a negotiated settlement. And I don’t expect this anytime soon.

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What’s next in Gaza if Hamas rejects peace

9:50 pm

If Hamas continues to reject a proposed peace plan negotiated by Egypt, Israel is likely to return to Gaza with a much broader offensive.

A broader ground offensive can take multiple forms, and its scope can vary as well. On one end of the spectrum is a smaller operation that can last a few weeks, in which ground forces seize Gaza, deliver a powerful blow to Hamas’s military assets, and withdraw.

On the other end of the spectrum is an operation that would last at least about a year, in which ground units would spread out and go after all of Hamas’s guerrilla cells. Several intermediate options exist, too. Targets would include the remainder of Hamas’s weapons storage facilities, command and control sites, regional battalions, and its junior and senior leaders from its armed wing.

I hope Israel goes for the broadest most aggressive plan. The most humanitarian thing that could be done for the people in Gaza would be to remove Hamas and free them from its tyrannical, insane, and vicious rule.

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The background to the Rick Perry indictment

9:40 pm

A look at the historical background behind the absurd indictment this weekend.of Texas governor Rick Perry.

This indictment appears to be an example of the new Democratic Party modus operandi: Make up criminal charges against your opponents when you can’t beat them at the ballot box. They tried it in Alaska against Sarah Palin, they tried it in Wisconsin against Scott Walker and as many tea party activists there as possible, they tried it in Texas against Tom Delay, and back in the nineties they tried it against Newt Gingrich. In every case the charges were absurd and were eventually dropped or dismissed.

Now they are trying it against Rick Perry. If this is the best they can do it is no wonder no Democrat has won a state-wide election in Texas in years.

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IRS tech claims Lerner’s hard drive wasn’t damaged.

10:21 am

Cover-up: An IRS computer technician has contradicted the sworn testimony of IRS officials, stating that Lois Lerner’s hard drive was not damaged prior to its destruction.

Aaron Signor, an IRS technician that looked at Lerner’s hard drive in June 2011, said in IRS court filings that he saw no damage to the drive before sending it off to another IRS technician, leading some in the media to suggest that the lost emails scandal is basically over. But Signor’s statement, issued in response to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, does not jibe with sworn congressional testimony.

This testimony is one of the reasons Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered an independent inquiry into the IRS’s lost emails.

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Only some in the Muslim world condemn ISIS

10:03 pm

The Islamic world’s reaction to the ISIS persecution of non-Muslims is decidedly mixed.

This sentence from the link sums the situation up nicely:

At the same time that Islamic religious leaders are mostly silent on the genocide, Islamic political leaders have spoken out.

It appears that Islamic political leaders have generally been forthright in condemning ISIS’s actions, something that we should take heart from. Islam’s religious leaders however have taken a more partisan stand, worrying that ISIS’s actions might harm Islam and thus condemning it for that reason. That Christians and other non-Muslims might be murdered however does not seem to be a concern for these Islamic religious leaders.

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“A real Nobel Laureate takes pity on a fake Nobel Laureate.”

4:34 pm

Mark Steyn takes a look a one of Michael Mann’s many false claims and tears it to shreds, while also making Paul Krugman look somewhat foolish at the same time.

Michael Mann, a bad scientist who created the discredited hockey stick graph that supposedly proved global warming, is suing Steyn and others for daring to criticize him. In the process Steyn and others are finding ample material for making a great deal of fun of Mann while also finding more examples of his dishonesty and fraudulent behavior.

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IRS lets contractors rummage through taxpayer data

2:43 pm

Does this make you feel secure? An inspector general report found that the IRS allowed contractors access to personal taxpayer information without doing the required background checks required by IRS policy.

Contractors who have access to sensitive information, which also includes employee and law enforcement data, must undergo a background check if they’re with the IRS for more than six months.

But the inspector general’s audit found five contracts where contractors had not had any background checks out of the 28 total contracts reviewed. In one of those cases, a contractor working on printing and mailing tax forms was given a disk containing 1.4 million taxpayer names, Social Security numbers and other personal information. A separate contract, for couriers, had given a daily route to an ex-convict who served more than 20 years for arson, the report added. In another 12 cases, IRS staffers had started background checks for contractors, but contractors were allowed to start working before those investigations had concluded.

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“It was the grossest incompetence.”

12:23 pm

The IRS takes more than two years to issue a refund check because of its own stupidity.

This paragraph best sums up the entire idiocy:

Dinesen [representing the citizen] immediately contacted the collection division. He was told they had no record of the return. The identity theft unit was handling it, and the collection division’s computers weren’t capable of interfacing with the identity theft unit’s computers. “I asked if he could just call the identity theft unit to confirm the return had been filed. He said he couldn’t. His explanation for why not boiled down to, ‘We don’t do that,’” Dinesen said.

The agent agreed to suspend collection actions against Boka Gonzalez while Dinesen tried to resolve the case. “He also asked me to give him a call if I got any information from the identity theft unit. It seemed ridiculous to me that one part of the IRS would ask an outside person to keep him informed of what another part of the IRS was doing, but that was the level of dysfunction we were dealing with,” Dinesen said.

Read the whole story. It is horrifying. And remember, this is a case where the IRS was simply incompetent. Imagine the harm they could do if they wanted to do harm, or were ordered to do so by our political leaders. Thank God such things never happen!

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