Taliban fighters hide behind women and children

They are never going to get their 72 virgins like this. Perhaps they are waiting for 72 young boys to be available.

The BBC reported:

Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them.

The "Hide the Decline" Email Put in Context

Al Gore and other anthropogenic global warming believers claim the Climategate emails are taken out of context. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has blogged an excellent article that puts the Climategate "Hide the decline" email in context and it doesn't help the AGW position. In a nutshell, the IPCC wanted to use the historical proxy temperature change data in their Third Assessment Report, but they were concerned about the chart showing the wrong message since it declined in the late twentieth century.

A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the Policy Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only data [i.e. the Briffa reconstruction] somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly… This is probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present.. (Folland, Sep 22, 1999, in 0938031546.txt)

Here is what the chart would have looked like.


Of course, this version wasn't used. The "Hide the decline" trick was implemented and the chart below was used.


It appears the context of the "Hide the decline" email was the IPCC wanted them to "Hide the decline." How is that for putting it in context?

From the new Climate Audit site:

Much recent attention has been paid to the email about the “trick” and the effort to “hide the decline”. Climate scientists have complained that this email has been taken “out of context”. In this case, I’m not sure that it’s in their interests that this email be placed in context because the context leads right back to a meeting of IPCC authors in Tanzania, raising serious questions about the role of IPCC itself in “hiding the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction.

Relevant Climategate correspondence in the period (September-October 1999) leading up to the trick email is incomplete, but, in context, is highly revealing. There was a meeting of IPCC lead authors between Sept 1-3, 1999 to consider the “zero-order draft” of the Third Assessment Report. The emails provide clear evidence that IPCC had already decided to include a proxy diagram reconstructing temperature for the past 1000 years and that a version of the proxy diagram was presented at the Tanzania meeting showing the late twentieth century decline. I now have a copy of the proxy diagram presented at this meeting (see below).

(More here)

Global Warming: Let The Mockery Begin (video)

Enjoy!

Hide The Decline - Climategate (video)


Hat tip Wizbang.

Democrats Hide Health Care Reform True Cost

The Democrats are using a CBO analysis to say their health Care Plan costs A little over $1 trillion over ten years. This gives the impression their plan will only cost $100 billion per year. Is this true? No. The plan is slow to ramp up. This makes the first five years cost abnormally low. Once the plan gets going, the cost will be over $200 billion per year. That is double what many people are being led to believe.

From American Spectator:

It's important to keep in mind that the most costly aspects of the legislation involve providing subsidies to individuals to purchase health care ($773 billion) and to expand Medicaid ($438 billion), but it takes several years for those provisions to kick in. As you can see from the chart below, that means that the costs start out relatively modest but ramp up over time. In the first three years of the plan the cost of the subsidies and Medicaid expansion is just $8 billion; in the first five years, it's $202 billion; but in the last five years, it's $979 billion. Put another way, 17 percent of the spending comes in the first five years, while 83 percent comes in the second five years. What this means is that the American people see $1 trillion over 10 years and they think that means the bill would cost about $100 billion a year -- but the reality is more than double that. In the final year of the CBO estimates, 2019, the spending hits $230 billion. (accent is mine)

Graph from American Spectator.

Even with the estimated $230 billion per year cost in 2019, the CBO predicts there will still be 17 million left uninsured. Democrats are planning on paying for their health care reform bill with a wide variety of taxes.