Canada 1 USA 0: the tale of two housing markets

Today the Associated Press asserts, correctly, that Canada's economy is now the envy of the world.  However, the AP misses the big picture as to why.  Take a look at this graph, from the Canadian economics blog Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, showing income-adjusted housing prices in the US and Canada:

There was no housing bubble in Canada.

All the banking regulation in the world won't make me pay more or less for a house unless it changes the size and terms of the mortgage loan I can get. In the USA, our government enacted a major housing stimulus in the 1990s (via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act), getting banks to lend people more and more money at lower and lower rates. This caused the decade-long housing bubble, which took our economy down when it inevitably burst. The Canadian government never enacted a housing stimulus, so their housing market remained stable. Canada had no bubble to burst, so they recovered quickly from this recession. That is the lesson we should learn from Canada -- not, as the article suggests, that their centralized and highly-regulated banking system is somehow superior to our own.

Demonizing the "far-right" in Europe

The Telegraph yesterday published an entire article comparing Hungary's "far-right" Jobbik Party to Nazis and Fascists. But the article's only mention of an actual Jobbik policy is their desire to stop people from "sponging off the state", and to force "anyone claiming benefits to perform public service in return."

The Telegraph states the Jobbik Party identifies the Roma, a.k.a. the "gypsies", as a big part of the "sponging" problem, which I guess could remind people of the anti-ethnic-minority positions of the Nazis and Fascists. But it seems Jobbik's solution is simply to get the Roma, and everyone else, off the public trough. That's a far cry from the Fascists' policy of shipping people "to Hitler's death camps". In fact, considering Hungary's financial situation, getting people off the public trough seems like common-sense good policy.

So why is the Jobbik's rise to power "disturbing" to the Telegraph? Is there really something ugly about them? Or is it the Telegraph's default editorial position that anyone arguing for more personal responsibility and less dependence on government should be compared at length to Nazis and Fascists?

The meaning of "general welfare" in the Constitution

In honor of Constitution Day, I am presenting a short lesson on the meaning of the term "general welfare" in the Constitution. The term appears twice. In the Preamble:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

and in Article 1 Section 8:

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Over time, Liberals and Progressives have used these references to "general welfare" to justify unlimited expansion of federal government power. They argue that, despite the Constitution's limit on the scope of the federal government to specific enumerated powers, the government has the power to do anything if it merely states it is to benefit the "general welfare". Therefore, they argue, the federal government has the power of taxation for the purpose of redistributing wealth, of mandating the purchase of health insurance, and so on.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote extensively about what is meant by the term "general welfare" in the Constitution. Their views reflect the original intent of the Constitution, which is its only meaning until it is amended otherwise. Madison was very specific in regards to Art.1 Sec. 8 and the words "general welfare". He said:

"To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators".

The following is a selection of additional quotes by Madison and Jefferson on "general welfare" and the Constitution:

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare', I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare." James Madison

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." Thomas Jefferson

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." James Madison, 4 Annals of Congress 179, 1794

"[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." James Madison

The Framers of the Constitution explicitly stated that charity is no duty or power of the federal government. They were not against charity, at the private or state government level, but they understood that if the federal government is given the power to do anything in the name of charity, it will inevitably use charity as an excuse to expand its own size and power, and the power and liberty of the states and of the people will be diminished and eventually destroyed. We are far down that path today. It would be good on this Constitution Day for Liberals and Conservatives alike to consider the above words and wisdom of our Founding Fathers and re-evaluate their views on the proper role and power of the federal government.

Update:
I forgot to include another quote from James Madison, which encapsulates the entire spirit of the Constitution and the intended legal role of the federal government:

"Powers delegated to the federal government are few & defined. Those which are to remain in the states are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects: war, peace, negotiation & foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties & properties of the people" James Madison

Obama unveils his plan to kill tens of thousands of American civilians

Today, the Obama administration unveiled its plan to raise car fuel efficiency requirements to 35.5 mpg by 2016.  CAFE standards force Americans into smaller, lighter cars that fail to protect passengers in collisions.  The National Academy of Sciences has linked current fuel efficiency standards with about 2,000 additional deaths per year by traffic accidents.  From USA Today:

To hit the 2016 targets, automakers plan to field more small cars and smaller engines with advanced technology. Ford Motor plans to bring an array of its small, European-market cars. Fiat-controlled Chrysler will sell versions of the Italian maker's small cars. General Motors plans to boost its offerings rated 30 mpg or more on the highway by 65%.

Apparently the Obama administration is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives in order to reduce the atmospheric content of a compound that's essential to life on Earth and has no detrimental effect on anything.

Obama's health care savings estimate off by a factor of 4

In his speech last night on health care, President Obama stated:

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

I've done a simple calculation to check the accuracy of this statement.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates Obamacare will add $1 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.  In 2007-2008 there were 43 million and 49 million Medicare and Medicaid recipients, respectively.  The average annual administrative cost per person in Medicare was $509 in 2005 (the most recent data available), and we can assume a similar number for Medicaid.  If Obamacare succeeds beyond everyone's wildest dreams, in fact beyond what is physically possible, and reduces waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid by 100%, it will save $509 x (43 + 49 million) * 10 years = $468 billion over 10 years.  That's less than half the net cost of Obamacare.

A more reasonable estimate would be a waste reduction of 50%*, which would mean $234 billion in savings.  That's less than 1/4 the net cost of Obamacare.  Also note that the CBO's $1 trillion estimate already takes into account the cost savings proposed in H.R. 3200, so in reality Obama's savings estimate is off by a far greater amount.  There is no way reducing waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid could pay for Obamacare.

*Many conservatives argue there will be no savings at all.

The country's in the very best of hands...

One has to wonder how the 9-11 truther Van Jones made it past Obama's notoriously extensive 7-page appointee vetting questionnaire to become his "Green Jobs Czar".

Real Health Care Reform

Today my article on health care reform was published in the Orlando/UCF newspaper The Central Florida Future. Here's the link to the online version. Check out the comments too.

Canadian human rights progress; European human rights decline

There are many reasons Americans have historically differentiated ourselves from Europeans (and it's unfortunate that today some believe we should emulate Europe). One such reason is our respect for natural human rights like freedom of speech. As a consequence America has rejected the idea of "hate speech". The same doesn't hold true for Canada, where hate speech laws have been used to prosecute individuals for committing acts that in the US would be protected as basic human rights: expressing a religious belief (pastor Stephen Boisson), criticizing a religious belief (author Mark Steyn), publishing those infamous Muhammad cartoons (human rights hero Ezra Levant), and allowing visitors to post hateful comments on your website (webmaster Marc Lemire), even if the comment is left "by a police officer posing as a racist".

It should come as a shock to Americans that these simple acts are viewed as crimes by our neighbors to the north (the Canadian government, not necessarily the Canadian people). In defending these prosecutions, Canadian Human Rights Commissioner Dean Steacy recently stated: "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value". This sentiment prompted a call for Congress to put Canada on the watch list of human rights abusers.

Today a major ruling in the Lemire case marks a victory for the cause of human rights in Canada. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which concerns hate speech, was found to be in violation of Canadians' Charter Right to freedom of expression. While this ruling only applies to the Lemire case and it will certainly be appealed, one can hope that this is the first step in toppling the regime of censorship in Canada.

Conversely, in Europe today: Dutch prosecutors are charging an Arab cultural group under hate speech laws for posting a cartoon on their own website. I won't post the cartoon here because I don't want the Dutch police coming after me (just kidding, I live in America - here it is), but here's the description:

The cartoon shows two apparently Jewish men standing near a pile of skeletons with a sign that says "Auswitch," presumably representing the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz.

One pokes a bone with a stick and says "I don't think they're Jews" and the other answers, "We have to get to the six million somehow."

The Arab European League posted their cartoon as an "act of civil disobedience" in response to the Netherlands' refusal to prosecute a Dutch lawmaker for including cartoons of Muhammad in a film. One might presume the AEL's objective is not to contest hate speech laws, but to have them enforced against those who insult Islam. However, according to the article, the AEL chairman has stated he believes anyone should be allowed to publish insulting material in the interest of public debate.

In 2005 free speech activists around the world rallied in support of the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of Muhammad and prompted worldwide protests by Muslims. Will free speech crusaders come to the defense of Muslims this time around?

Private Health Insurers: Devils, Saints, or just Humans?

Congress is about to vote on one of the most consequential bills in American history, and proponents of the Obamacare bill refuse to present a real, fundamental analysis of the situation they're trying to address.

What are the problems, what are the goals, and what can we do to address the problems directly to achieve those goals? This kind of discussion is nowhere to be heard among Obamacare supporters. Even the President himself avoids it. Instead he simplistically states that there are 50 million uninsured in America, as if that were the problem. It's not - it's a symptom of the problem. Many problems, in fact. The correct questions to ask are: who are these 50-million uninsured, and why are they uninsured?

I've answered those questions previously. Suffice it to say that any plan that treats the symptom rather than the disease is doomed to failure. One of the big symptoms is that the costs of health care and insurance for that care are rising faster than the rate of inflation. The "diseases" causing this symptom can be divided into two overlapping categories: those concerning the insurance industry, and those concerning health-care providers (e.g. doctors, hospitals). In this post I address the former.

Private Health Insurers: Devils, Saints, or just Humans?

Democrats have suddenly re-branded their health bill "health insurance reform", rather than "health care reform". Nancy Pelosi has gone as far as to call insurance companies "villains". Liberals, Obama included, regularly lambaste the insurance industry for profiting from hard-working Americans' suffering - never mind the fact that insurance companies profit when their customers are healthy, and lose money when they get sick. So let's take a look at the insurance industry. Are their profits unreasonable? Are they milking their customers and benefiting from their suffering?

UnitedHealth Group, the country's biggest health insurance provider, has 70 million customers. In 2007, UnitedHealth made $4 billion in profit. That's a lot of money, but how much is that per customer? Or a better question: how much are consumers paying in their monthly premiums for UnitedHealth's big profits? The answer: ($4 billion) / (70 million * 12 months) = $5 per month.

That's right, Americans are paying $5 per month for their insurance companies' profits. Is a $5 monthly profit excessive, evil, and villainous? Let's say my individual insurance premium is $180 per month. If we completely wiped out all insurance company profits - i.e. transformed health insurance into a non-profit industry - my premium would only be lowered to $175 per month. And remember: that $5 provides all the incentive for these companies to exist and offer their services in the first place.

With this information any reasonable person can conclude that the "for-profit" insurance model is not one of our health care problems. But if only $5 of Americans' monthly premiums accounts for insurers' profits, how does the rest of the cost break down?

In the year 2000, administrative cost in the insurance industry was $256 per customer annually, or $21 per month. That number includes profits and other expenses that aren't really "administrative costs", such as taxes and health services provided directly by the company. So if my monthly premium was $180, removing all administrative costs - i.e. if the insurance company were to operate non-profit and at 100% efficiency - would lower it to $159. That $159 is essentially the per-person cost of the health care services used by all 200 million insured Americans. Health insurance reform can't touch that cost - unless they want to ration care.

Is $21 per month a reasonable amount to pay for the administration of an insurance policy? It's not wholly unreasonable, but I would prefer to pay less. The problem is, by 2005 that amount had ballooned to $38 - almost double! And that's still less than in government-run programs like Medicare, which had administrative costs of $32 per person in 2000 rising to $42 in 2005.

Why have administrative costs increased so rapidly, in both the public and private sector, and how do we fix it? High administrative costs are a sign of inefficiency. There is no uniform or sure-fire way to increase efficiency. Less paperwork, lower cost of doing business - including the cost of compliance with state regulations, higher worker productivity, better company organization - all these things could help, but the extent to which and the means of achieving these results will vary from company-to-company and institution-to-institution.

The interesting thing is, according to fundamental economics, a high degree of inefficiency should never manifest in an industry operating in a free market. Competition and the incentive to maximize profit should lead to improved efficiency over time. In light of this, one thing is clear: the insurance industry is not operating in a free market.

That the health industry is devoid of free market forces is widely-recognized, but ignored by Obamacare proponents. The lack of competition in health insurance, which is largely the fault of bad regulations at the state level, has caused that industry to bloat and swell with inefficiency. The rising cost of health insurance is not the fault of the insurance companies; it is human nature to become inefficient when the driving force for efficiency is removed. The same thing would, and does, happen to any company in any industry when competition is lacking.

The solution to this problem is not more state or federal control, as in Obamacare, because the monopoly of government also suffers from a lack of competitive forces. Rather, the solution requires a re-working of anti-competitive state regulations and a market-based approach to increase consumer choice and cost-based decision-making.

UPDATE: Health Insurance Industry Ranks 86th in Profit Margins

More Foreign Policy Dichotomy

On Drudge Report today, contrasting headlines:

US revokes visas for Honduran officials, and:

USA, British envoys attempting to open talks with Taliban.

So let me get this straight: the Obama administration is willing to open dialogue with the murderous Taliban, but is unwilling to speak with the constitutionally-legitimate, democratic government of Honduras.

Would someone from the press PLEASE ask Obama to explain this dichotomy?

Global Warming Update: Whistleblower Leaks Raw Temperature Data

In my recent post I examined the scientific evidence for global warming and found that there's no evidence at all. I pointed out that the so-called "global temperature" graphs purported to show a recent rapid rise in temperature are based on bad science, dubious data, and are wrought with almost infinite statistical uncertainty. Meanwhile, there is a wealth of consistent, reliable data from land-based and satellite measurements that show no warming trend. The data reveals the truth: global warming is not happening.

I also mentioned that those famous "global temperature" graphs were produced by climate activist scientists who have not disclosed the methods, calculations, or raw data used to generate those graphs. Steve McIntyre, the Canadian mathematician-turned-climate-researcher, editor of Climate Audit, co-winner of the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Science Blog, and exposer of the Michael Mann "hockey stick graph" fraud, has been filing Freedom of Information requests to the various government agency gatekeepers of raw climate data. So far he's been stonewalled; it appears governments are not willing to reveal raw data from the studies they've used to promote global warming. I wonder why this could be?

But there is hope. Just yesterday, a mole within the Hadley Climate Research Unit leaked their raw data. Note that the "global temperature" graph featured on the Hadley CRU homepage is one I outed as being totally bogus.

Now that the raw data is in McIntyre's hands, maybe an honest and open analysis will reveal the truth about temperature trends from this dataset. My guess: it will conform with the many consistent data sets and show there is no warming trend. McIntyre is continuing his efforts to acquire additional raw data through his FOI requests.

Obama's policy on Honduras threatens freedom and democracy in Latin America

Why doesn't the mainstream media take on Obama for his stance on Honduras? Is it because the reporters are ignorant of the situation? Or because they think the American people don't care about a small country that happens to be our near neighbor and ally? Or do they simply avoid criticizing Obama at all costs?

The Honduran crisis is almost a month old. That means Obama has had plenty of time to read the Constitution of Honduras and realize that what he has called a "coup" is really the legitimate government of Honduras defending the rule of law. Their Constitution explicitly demands that anyone who attempts what Zelaya did be removed from office and deported:

The Constitution of Honduras:

Article 239: No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.

Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

ARTICLE 42: Citizenship is forfeited by those who:

5. Incite, encourage or support the continuity or re-election of President of the Republic

Article 374: It cannot be reformed, under any circumstances, the previous article, this article, the Constitutional articles related to the form of government, the national territory, Presidential term-limits, the prohibition of a President to be re-elected, and the requirement and prohibitions on who can and cannot be President.

Zelaya attempted to do each of the things prohibited by Articles 239, 42, and 374:

• The term for President of Honduras is 4 years. Article 239 prohibits anyone who has served as President from running again. Zelaya attempted to remain President beyond his 4-year term. By this action, the Constitution says he must immediately resign the Presidency and be barred from any public office for 10 years.

• Zelaya desired to remain President beyond his 4-year term. He made this known publicly, which explictly violates Article 42, and by doing so Zelaya has forfeited his Honduran citizenship.

• Zelaya tried to hold a referrendum to extend the Presidential term limits so that he could hold the Presidency beyond the Constitutional 4-year term. The referrendum was barred by the Supreme Court, so he enlisted the help of Hugo Chavez, who printed the ballots in Venezuela and shipped them to Honduras. Zelaya's illegal referrendum violates Article 374, which explicitly prohibits reforming Presidential term limits.

So there you have it. The Constitution of Honduras demands that, for his actions, Zelaya be removed as President and stripped of his Honduran citizenship. That's exactly what happened: Zelaya was removed from office and exiled.

Yet the AP is still supporting Obama's assertion that this carrying-out of Constitutional law was a "coup". In addition, so-called Latin America expert Vicki Gass says "Constitutional order and rule of law have to be restored", meaning reinstating Zelaya as President. How the AP could cite an "expert" who hasn't even read the Honduran Constitution is beyond me.

Obama's decision to support a man who attempted to usurp his country's Constitution and instill himself as a perpetual dictator is the most outrageous and shameful American foreign policy I have ever witnessed. I would expect this from the U.N. and Europe, but I'd hoped that even under Obama America was still a nation that stood for freedom in the world. It's sad to be proven wrong in such spectacular fashion.

The Data Reveals the Truth: Global Warming is Not Happening

With the cap-and-trade bill making its way through Congress, I think it's time to express my opinion on the subject of climate change and global warming. I am not an expert in the field, but I am a scientist and the points I make are scientifically valid and correct to the best of my knowledge.

The debate over global warming can be distilled to two basic questions:

(1) Is the earth undergoing an unusual period of warming? and,

(2) Is the warming caused by the man-caused increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (and if so, what can we do about it)?

In this post I address the first question: is the planet warming? Even many “skeptics” say that it is. You can google “climate change” and find graphs showing a sharp warming trend in recent years, and easily convince yourself that global warming is real. A scientist, however, must consider not only these graphs, but how they were constructed – the raw data, the methodology – to determine their validity.

I have done so, and I've concluded that global warming is NOT happening. Or more accurately, there is no reliable evidence that it is happening. The figures and "facts" used to demonstrate global warming are unreliable and the analyses invalid, while the voluminous reliable data show that the warming trend claimed by global warming proponents does not exist.

The bogus "hockey stick" graph

First let's start with the famous “hockey stick” graph. There are several versions of this graph, produced by different climatology groups, and they show the same thing: from the year 1000 until about 1900 the “global temperature” has varied mildly up and down, but from 1900 onward it skyrockets (hence the term “hockey stick”).


This graph, constructed mostly by Michael E. Mann, has been so criticized and discredited for its bad methodology and mathematics that it is now considered totally bogus and bordering on scientific malpractice. In fact, Mann's statistical algorithm has been shown to produce that “hockey stick” shape even when fed random data. Any conclusions based on this or similar graphs should be discarded.

The impossible task of calculating "global temperature"

Now that the issue of the "hockey stick" graph is out of the way, let's address a real scientific problem. How does one calculate the average "global temperature"?

The reality is that it is so difficult to determine the average temperature of an entire planet that it's reasonable to say there is no such thing. Of course scientists try to calculate it anyway and this is done through several means, which can be divided into two categories: direct measurements, typically limited to modern times, and temperature reconstructions, for hundreds to thousands or millions of years ago. For this post I will limit the discussion to modern direct measurements.

Bogus "global temperature" calculations

Throughout modern history humans have recorded the temperature of the air where we live. Since the late 1800s this has been done in an organized fashion, with standardized equipment set up in meteorological monitoring stations around the world. This continues to today, and the recordings are now assembled in a centralized database.

The problem is that the meteorological stations cover only a tiny fraction of the global land surface. To extrapolate an average temperature for the entire planet from this sparse and sporadic data requires generous assumptions and mathematical calculations which, to my knowledge, have only been publicly described in a qualitative way. Nevertheless, some scientists have used this data, and found that their calculated "global temperature" has been rising rapidly in recent years:



The above “global temperature” graph was originally produced by Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Hansen runs NASA GISS, and is responsible for nearly every graph and study cited by global warming proponents. He is also a famous climate activist who argues that CEOs of fossil fuel companies should be put on trial for "high crimes against humanity and nature". He is the same Dr. Hansen who, along with actress Daryl Hannah and 30 other climate activists, was arrested in June 2009 in a protest at a coal mining facility in West Virginia. His strange behavior and climate activism should not necessarily disqualify his research, but it is clear he is not following the impartiality and professionalism that should be expected of respectable scientists.

Look at the above figure in detail. It traces the “global temperature” from 1880 to today using a single line. The green “error bars” on the graph are not really error bars – they don't reflect uncertainty in the “global temperature” calculation, but “account only for incomplete spatial sampling of data”. I've already mentioned the impossibility of calculating an average “global temperature”, but even without that understanding any honest scientist could point out that this graph is absurd. The number of meteorological stations and the fraction of global area covered have changed dramatically from 1880 to today. Therefore any comparison of global averages necessarily draws from vastly different data sets from year to year. Despite the best efforts of the researchers, this will skew the averages over time. The construction of this graph is an interesting exercise for curiosity's sake, but it cannot be relied upon to draw conclusions about global climate.

To further demonstrate this point, take a look at this video, which shows how the temperature network has grown since the 1890s, and then dwindled in modern times:



Every scientist knows that when half the data points are thrown out it is bound to skew the results.

Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the raw station data must be thoroughly processed and manipulated to yield an average "global temperature". NOAA has published the temperature difference between the raw data and the processed numbers used in their climate figures. The result is their "adjusted" data shows an additional 0.5 degree (F) temperature increase over the past 5 decades that is not present in the raw data:

Reliable temperature measurements show no warming

The only reliable and scientifically accurate way to determine temperature trends is to limit our analysis to consistent data sets. By this I mean temperature measurements made using a single reliable method, at a single location or over a consistently-well-covered region of the globe, for an extended period of time. It just so happens that many such data sets exist, and they offer no evidence of global warming.

The most reliable and consistent temperature record in existence uses a single measurement method over a very large contiguous area and length of time: the meteorological record of the United States of America. I have downloaded the data and plotted it with no modification:


As you can see, there is no warming trend in the United States. This fact is well-known, but global warming proponents claim it is an anomaly – that for reasons unknown the USA is not experiencing global warming. Is it a coincidence that the single most reliable temperature record in the world shows no warming and is discounted as an unexplainable anomaly, while the dubious and scientifically-invalid calculation of “global temperature” shows warming and is heralded as fact? (Also note that the USA graph includes the artificial 0.5-degree warming that, as shown above, NOAA added to the raw data.)

If the lack of warming in the USA temperature record is really an anomaly, then what about other consistent temperature records from around the world?

Graphs of individual temperature stations from around the world are available online. I have downloaded data from 18 stations at random. The areas sampled include eastern, western, and northern Canada, Alaska, the Arctic, the Antarctic, Australia, Europe, Greenland, Iceland, Egypt, northern and sub-Saharan Africa, and South America. I limited my sampling to mostly stations in rural areas (to avoid the urban "heat island" effect), and those with uninterrupted data extending back most of a century. An example is shown below: data from Anchorage, Alaska, and Reykjavik, Iceland. The complete set is available here.

Not one shows a dramatic warming trend. In not one location are today's temperatures unusually warm. This is a small sample of the total number of stations, but what is the probability that 18 stations selected at random would show no evidence of warming if a dramatic warming trend really exists? Or is it more likely that, as I have argued, the graphs of "global temperature" are bogus and global warming is not really happening?

The ice caps are not melting

Direct temperature measurements are not the only consistent means of determining global climate trends. Global warming proponents often claim that the melting of the polar ice caps is strong evidence for global warming. Amazingly, global sea ice data from NOAA proves just the opposite: the ice caps are not melting and global warming is not happening.

It is true that Arctic ice has been shrinking in recent years, but Antarctic ice is growing - at the same rate. The total sea ice coverage of the planet has remained unchanged ever since satellite measurements began in 1979, as depicted by the red "anomaly" line in the above graph hovering around zero. The fact that Arctic ice is melting while Antarctic is growing is a sign of shifting weather patterns, not of global warming.

Satellite temperature measurements show no warming

There is one more consistent data set: global satellite temperature measurements. Since 1979 a series of satellites in orbit have been monitoring global temperatures. The satellite data provide probably the best estimate of global atmospheric temperature trends. I have downloaded the satellite data directly from the source and plotted it below:

Where is the dramatic warming trend? The satellite data looks nothing at all like Hansen's "global temperature" graphs. It is clear from the above plot that any evidence of warming is inconclusive at best, and there is a slight cooling trend since the temperature peak in 1998. (Note: the two large spikes in the TLS data are the result of volcanic eruptions.)

Conclusion: Global warming is NOT happening

Several reliable, consistent data sets show no evidence of warming. The evidence in favor of global warming comes from heavily-processed and manipulated, scientifically-unreliable figures made by scientists-turned-climate-activists. As an objective scientist or observer, which data would you trust? The answer is clear: global warming does not exist.

In a following post I will address a different question: is the idea that man-made CO2 emissions can cause global warming a valid scientific theory?

Saddam misled the world about WMDs out of fear of Iran

FBI Interviews: Hussein Lied About WMD Out of Fear of Iran

This is old news. I've known for ages that Saddam deliberately misled the world about WMDs as a bluff to prevent Iran from invading. So why is this finally being reported by the MSM? Well, the elections are over, so now it's ok to release info that would (partially) vindicate the people who voted for the Iraq war. At least, that's my guess.

U.N. General Assembly Demands Restoration of Honduras' Ousted President

U.N. General Assembly Demands Restoration of Honduras' Ousted President

Of course they do. Most world leaders, apparently Obama included, have dictatorial aspirations themselves. Therefore it is not their motivation to defend freedom and liberty and the rule of law, but to defend one of their own.