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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Government employee union boss calls for thug tactics against voter ID

Charles C. Johnson

J. David Cox, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, pledged to ignore the Supreme Court and said that he and the labor movement would “fight in the streets” against Republican governors’ supporters of voter integrity efforts.

“I’m committing myself, I’m committing our union, and the labor movement. We will not — we will not — allow Republican governors to control the vote in this country,” he said to applause. “That is a God-given right of every citizen. The right to vote! We are going to fight ‘em. We’re going to fight them in the streets. We are going to fight them anywhere. We are going to fight them! I don’t care what the Supreme Court says.....To Read More....

Black Friday protests give shoppers a dose of Big Labor power

By Eric Boehm / November 28, 2013

 "As part of our mission to supply far-reaching coverage of state house and government news, Watchdog.org encourages all news broadcasters, media organizations and citizen journalists to steal our work." This originally appeared here.

Shoppers on Black Friday are probably more interested in finding the best deals on the hottest holiday toys than getting a crash course in progressive politics, but groups targeting Walmart and other major retailers have other plans.

Protests being organized by a group known as OUR Walmart are planned at locations in all 50 states and have the backing of prominent labor unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Service Employees International Union, and the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for dozens of labor unions.

The protests are intended to call attention to what OUR Walmart says are the low wages and poor working conditions at the massive American retail chain, but some see the efforts as thinly-veiled union activism that would be illegal if carried out by the unions directly.

JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WAL-MART: Though they are meant to look like local, grassroots protests, Friday’s events are coordinated at the national level by a group funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers.

So, let’s pull back that veil.

OUR Walmart is part of a new breed of labor organizations known as “workers’ centers,” which mix progressive politics with union organizing and a pinch of radical tactics borrowed from groups like Occupy Wall Street. The groups have sprung up in major cities across the country and prefer large, loud protests instead of the traditional collective bargaining process.

And they are backed, vocally and financially, by big unions.

All over America, workers are organizing in all kinds of ways, and they call their unity by all kinds of names — workers’ unions, associations, centers, networks,” said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka at the union’s annual conference earlier this year.

Workers centers with ties to SEIU were behind the Labor Day fast food protests that took place in many cities. They’ve also been behind a series of disruptive protests at American restaurant chains over low pay for restaurant workers.

“Contrary to their public façade, union front groups are well-financed, highly sophisticated labor organizations,” said Glenn Spencer, vice president of the Workforce Freedom Initiative, an anti-union group. “When you pull back the curtain, one finds a river of financial support flowing to these groups from activist foundations.’”

OUR Walmart can trace its origins to UFCW, a national union that represents mostly retail employees.

HE WANTS YOU: AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka is looking to expand the labor union’s influence to workers who are not covered by collective bargaining agreements.

In its 2011 filing with the U.S. Labor Department, UFCW announced it was forming a subsidiary organization known as “Organization United for Respect at Walmart,” later shortened to OUR Walmart.

According to UFCW, the purpose of the subsidiary group is to make “Walmart a better corporate citizen.”

Publicly, UFCW distances itself from OUR Walmart and acts as if the two are separate entities — a posture that everyone from CBS News to The Daily Show has exposed as being fake.

That’s not unusual.

Though they are not required to file the same public reporting documents as unions, the beginnings of most “workers centers” can be connected to the labor movement — literally, in many cases, since SEIU, UFCW and other politically-powerful unions gave much of the initial support and seed money to get those operations off the ground.

Read the fine print at the bottom of the OUR Walmart website, and the connection is even clearer.

UFCW and OUR Walmart have the purpose of helping Walmart employees as individuals or groups in their dealings with Walmart over labor rights and standards and their efforts to have Walmart publically commit to adhering to labor rights and standards,” reads the legal disclaimer. “UFCW and OUR Walmart have no intent to have Walmart recognize or bargain with UFCW or OUR Walmart as the representative of Walmart employees.

The group doesn’t want to bargain on behalf of Walmart employees. Instead, it wants to use a mix of negative public relations and loud protests to bend Walmart to its will.

On its face, the entire effort requires convincing the public of two incongruous ideas.

First, the supposedly grassroots groups want Black Friday shoppers to believe the average Walmart wage of $12.83 per hour isn’t enough to raise a family. But secondly, the groups want shoppers to believe those same low-wage workers have enough time and money to organize and fund a multi-city campaign of public relations efforts and protests (not to mention all the protest guides and materials offered through their websites.)

Recently, unions have begun to embrace the workers centers they helped found.

SEI U THERE: The SEIU will be protesting alongside the Our Walmart group on Friday. But that’s no surprise, since the SEIU was secretly behind the fast food worker protests earlier this year, which were launched by a similar workers center group.

Last week, Trumka and Joseph Hansen, international president of UFCW, were the lead speakers on a conference call announcing the Black Friday protests. Representatives from progressive groups like MoveOn.org joined them.

State level unions have joined the effort too.

Walmart is the symbol of rising economic inequality in America. The large corporation made $17 billion in profits this year, but pays its employees poverty wages: 825,000 of their employees make less than $25,000 a year, trapping them and their families in a state of economic insecurity,” Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale said in a statement this week.

In Florida, members of SEIU will protest alongside OUR Walmart at several locations.

If labor unions are funding workers centers, and are increasingly vocal in their support of the organizations’ tactics and policies, why continue to pretend they’re separate?

One answer, perhaps, is that workers centers can get away with things that would be illegal for labor unions to do, such as the protests planned at Walmart stores Friday.

A variety of federal laws limit the activities of labor unions. Importantly, they are not allowed to engage in activities that directly interfere with commerce — picket lines are legal, of course, but the large, loud and disruptive protests carried out by groups like OUR Walmart, the Restaurant Opportunity Center and other workers centers are not subject to those labor laws, because the groups are registered as nonprofits.

“Workers centers give unions a way to play in the legal shadows while skirting accountability and oversight,” said Jim Plunkett, director of labor law policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “By avoiding being labeled as labor organizations, they’re able to play fast and loose with labor requirements.”

Will Patrick contributed to this report. He can be reached at WPatrick@Watchdog.org

Boehm is a reporter for Watchdog.org and can be reached at EBoehm@Watchdog.org. Follow him on Twitter @EricBoehm87.

Inflation, Shortages, and Social Democracy in Venezuela

Mises Daily: Friday, November 29, 2013 by Matt McCaffrey and Carmen Dorobat
The economic turmoil in Venezuela has received increasing international media attention over the past few months. In September, the toilet paper shortage (which followed food shortages and electricity blackouts) resulted in the “temporary occupation” of the Paper Manufacturing Company, as armed troops were sent to ensure the “fair distribution” of available stocks. Similar action occurred a few days ago against electronics stores: President Nicolás Maduro accused electronics vendors of price-gouging, and jailed them with the warning that “this is just the start of what I’m going to do to protect the Venezuelan people.”
Earlier this month, in another attempt to ensure “happiness for all people,” Maduro began to hand out Christmas bonuses, in preparation for the coming elections in December. But political campaigning is not the only reason for the government’s open-handedness. The annual inflation rate in Venezuela has been rapidly rising in recent months, and has now reached a staggering 54 percent (not accounting for possible under-estimations). Although not yet officially in hyperinflation, monetary expansion is pushing Venezuela toward the brink…… seeds of disaster are sown from the beginning of government intervention in the market, although “the first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years.” But the final stages of economic collapse occur far more quickly....... the difference between the U.S. and other Western economies and Venezuela is merely one of degree, not of kind..…To Read More……

Friday, November 29, 2013

Bukovsky: Judgment in Moscow, Chapter 1

By Diana West on Friday, November 29, 2013

What a publishing coup for the editors at Breitbart News when Vladimir Bukovsky chose to offer them the first chapter of his 1993 book, Judgment in Moscow, for publication for the first time in English. Published in other languages including French (
Judgment a Moscou,1995), Random House acquired the book in the 1990s, but, as Bukovsky lays out below, the deal became contingent on deep, transformative revisions he simply refused to make.  As Bukovsky explains, Random House honcho Jason Epstein was determined to shape Bukovsky's remarkable manuscript based on a trove of ultra-secret Soviet documents to fit the conventional wisdom ... the consensus ... the court history of the Cold War -- never mind the evidence as laid out in these stunning documents themselves. Something else... Read More »

Four things Obama is thankful for

By Amie Parnes - 11/28/13
President Obama hasn’t made a dent in his second-term legislative agenda and has seen his poll numbers plummet in a difficult first year of his second term.  For the first time in his presidency, fewer Americans trust and like him, raising serious questions, even among his supporters, about whether he can make anything of his final three years in office.  White House allies—including Obama’s most staunch supporters—acknowledge the trouble plaguing the administration.  “There's no way to fudge it, it's been a pretty bleak year for the president,” said one former senior administration official. “It hasn't been victory after victory. In fact, the bright spots have been hard to discern.”  mAs bad as things have been, however, Obama has a handful of things to be thankful for, and hopeful that he can still turn around his second term…..To Read More……
My Take   There are a ton of comments about his article, and you may wish to review them, but if not, I have listed a number of them here.  To quote one of the responders who refers to himself as “Mein Kampf” -  I thought this was a serious article until I saw the economy was #1... funny!  It would appear that almost all of the readers of this article that appeared in The Hill had the same opinion and created their own lists.
Someone named “Sam’ said; “1) The Press 2) Uninformed Voters 3) Deceased Voters 4) Lap Dogs in Senate”.  He was followed by sonnyboy1saying, The only things obama is truly grateful for are; 1. The idiots who voted for him. 2. The senate and congress who don't have the cajones to impeach him.  Tony_Secosays, ‘Obama should be thankful for an electorate where over half willing believe his lies’, but I think robertbubba2 really hit the nail on the head pointing out; “4 things he can always count on NBC,CBS,ABC and MSNBC !!!!”
The lists were varied and not all had four items.  This one from "eoddvpj"says he can be, “Thankful for: 1-He doesn't have to run again, 2-Golf, 3-He has Repubs to blame, 4-He has Bush to blame.”  Then we have ewm who went historical on us with; 1. Saul Alinsky, 2. Jeremiah Wright,  3. Anita Dunn and 4. Tony Rezko
Salva veritate says; “The 4 things Obama is really grateful for: 1) That the records of his past are locked up tighter than data at the NSA, 2) The press is full of communist sympathizers, 3) No one has called his Unconstitutional executive orders bluff & impeached him, 4) The federal government, under the Dept of Education, has successfully dumbed down the population over the last couple of generations to the point that an idiot like him could actually get elected.
Gunner was far more succinct.  “Four things Obama is thankful for, Libtard low effort thinking voter's, Libtard low effort thinking voter's, Libtard low effort thinking voter's., Libtard low effort thinking voter's”, which kind of goes along with comments made by, georgedixon1.  He outlines his ‘five’ reasons Obama can be grateful.  1) Obama-IRS 2012 says Obama loves His corrupt IRS...otherwise would not have been thought to have won in 2012, 2) Democrat low information voters...to them Caring is only something to vote for...not to actually do, 3) Welfare and other Federal subsidies for his underclass, 4) Being a Liberal President is cushy job, lots of servants, big cars, free air travel, 5) No one has done any investigative journalism regarding him...
The we have proud patriot’s “Four things Obama is thankful for:1) Minority voters, 2) Welfare leeches 3) Harry Reid and the libtard dumbocrats of the Senate, 4) Mitt Romney.
DonRS isn’t as succinct as Gunner.  He says; “Let's consider some other things Obama should be thankful for: 1) An uninformed voting public. Too many voters pay no attention to the coming devastation set up by Obama's policies. 2) An inattentive voting public. Unless a problem SMACKS them in the face, their view is "what problem". 3) Establishment Republicans and RINOs. Elected officials that have long ago abandoned the notion of serving the people, rather fully adopted the idea of serving themselves. How many elected officials in Washington, DC, who, once they lose their office, return to "fly over country"? Rather than returning home, they remain in Washington, DC performing as lobbyists, consultants, or otherwise capitalizing on their contacts. Thus, they certainly don't want to alienate the entrenched liberals/socialists/communists/progressives/Democrats. Getting along by going along is their fundamental operating principle! 4) Lack of term limits on elected officials. The transformation of idealists, concerned about serving their constituents, good government, the Constitution, our laws, become the new residents of Washington, DC, loyal only to an ever expanding government, raking off lots of money for themselves, in the process! Most of our elected officials could not pass an IQ test! 5) An over riding factor of a thoroughly corrupt Federal Government - Legislative, Executive AND Judicial branches, exaggerated by the firmly entrenched, self serving bureaucracy!
Jamie think he should be grateful for 1. stupid democrats 2. dumb democrats 3.Ignorant democrats 4. obama worshipers.  He and Gunner have like thinking minds, keeping it short and sweet!  FThomasCain says; 1. The stupidity of the electorate,m 2. All the government dependent parasites Democrats have created over 50 years., 3. Democratic Party owned mainstream media, 4. A GOP leadership with no testicles, vision or plan on taxes, energy, welfare reform or trying to pass a balanced budget amendment - that would force all of the above.
Teapartyunobabyyyyyyyyyy lists Obama’s four accomplishments as  1. Jive talkin & walkin lies, 2. Soros puppet, 3. Jerimiah hateful wright aint right supporter, 4. Divider n Thief.
One thing is clear.  No matter what the polls say, Obama is incapable of fooling far more people than the media would have you believe, and in spite of how this is presented in so many different ways, there are a few things that rise above the rest.  These people believe, in all or part, Obama is in place because of the cowardly or corrupt media that is complicit in his crimes and won’t find fault with him or investigate his background, minority voters, dumbed down low information public, voter fraud, self promoters, large all too powerful corrupt government (all branches) and their agencies, corrupt big business, a corrupt, weak and cowardly opposition, corrupt elected Democrats, huge support from extreme leftists, and he lies with more skill and sincerity than Bill Clinton. 

Thursday, November 28, 2013

The Three Values of Science

Once in Hawaii, I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple, a man said, "I am going to tell you something that you will never forget." And then he said "To every man is given the key to Heaven. The same key opens the gates of Hell." And so it is with science. --Richard Feynman

Ross Pomeroy November 26, 2013

Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning American theoretical physicist, celebrated thinker, and architect of the atomic bomb, has long been known as one of science's greatest supporters. But it was he who spoke those forthright words in 1963 at a lecture at the University of Washington.
Years earlier, in the wake of watching his powerful, atom-splitting creations wreak unspeakable havoc and end thousands of lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the affable and cheery Feynman grew melancholic, grappling with a painful nuclear reality -- one he was instrumental in establishing -- as well as uncertainty over the shape of things to come.  "I didn't know what the future was going to look like, and I certainly wasn't anywhere near sure that we would last until now," he recalled in 1987. "Therefore one question was: is there some evil involved in science?"  Feynman was struggling with an existential crisis only a member of the Manhattan Project could truly experience…..To Read More…..

My Take – I know I’m treading on sacred ground when it comes to Feynman, but I have to tell you I don’t have a lot of sympathy for these Manhattan Project people who later lamented and vented their deepest emotions to the world for the part they played in the production of the atom bomb, later acting as if they felt this was just some exciting and grand experiment with no practical application, and were shocked when all those people were killed. What did they think they were going to do with it? Bombs are meant to kill people and destroy a lot of real estate, and they do a cracker jack job of it.

Many years ago a friend of mine, Dr. Bill Goffman, a mathematician at Case Western Reserve University, said something about atomic energy I never forgot. “Atomic energy was designed to kill people, and it does a cracker jack job of it.” So when these guys start venting their alleged regrets - I really don’t want to hear it - especially since those two bombs – as horrible as they were – saved millions of civilian lives by ending the war. I also find it interesting when atheists start spouting off about 'evil'.  How can anything be evil if there is no ultimate moral arbiter?  If there is no ultimate arbiter of good and evil, then nothing is good and nothing is evil except how we view reality in our own eyes, making all values arbitrary, and potentially temporary!

Can it be that these atheists are having conscience problems?  Nah….that would imply values that would be natural to all humans….like stealing, rape, murder, etc  Ooops….it just dawned on me.  Those are universal moral values shared by every race and every society, advanced and primitive, in the world all through human history.  Can it be – is it possible – dare I say it – is there really is an ultimate moral arbiter?   

Well, Feynman’s third value is; ""The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think."  So, we can assume a real scientist bashing believers is doubtful about all these absolute statements about atheism?  Sure doesn’t sound like it to me, but what do I know….since my personal motto is De Omnibus Dubitandum – question everything!  And I must tell you I have questioned the character of professional scientists for many years.

Immunology: The pursuit of happiness

Researchers have struggled to identify how certain states of mind influence physical health. One biologist thinks he has an answer.
Jo Marchant 27 November 2013
When Steve Cole was a postdoc, he had an unusual hobby: matching art buyers with artists that they might like. The task made looking at art, something he had always loved, even more enjoyable. “There was an extra layer of purpose. I loved the ability to help artists I thought were great to find an appreciative audience,” he says.
At the time, it was nothing more than a quirky sideline. But his latest findings have caused Cole — now a professor at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California, Los Angeles — to wonder whether the exhilaration and sense of purpose that he felt during that period might have done more than help him to find homes for unloved pieces of art. It might have benefited his immune system too.……..At the time, mainstream science rejected the idea that any psychological state, positive or negative, could affect physical well-being. But studies during the 1980s and early 1990s revealed that the brain is directly wired to the immune system — portions of the nervous system connect with immune-related organs such as the thymus and bone marrow, and immune cells have receptors for neurotransmitters, suggesting that there is crosstalk……“Mood matters. If we change the psychology, physiological changes do parallel that.”…… The researchers are not the first from the PNI community to face accusations of wishful thinking. Indeed, the story of the field's founder — hailed in the press as proof of the power of positive emotions — has been questioned…..To Read More…..
My Take – First off,  I believe having good feelings helps create good health, if for no other reason, negative feelings such as hate, anger, envy generate destructive chemicals in the system.  Positive emotions generate the opposite.  Will positive thinking cure cancer?  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it helps, in conjunction with medical treatments, but I have serious doubts positive feelings will do it on its own.  However, as I read this I couldn’t help but chuckle because there is one component to this you won’t find in any – or almost any – scientific study; the religious component.  Proverbs 14:30 Amplified Bible (AMP) says; A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body, but envy, jealousy, and wrath are like rottenness of the bones. 
I find that interesting….don’t you?

Can Red Wine Really Heal Cancer And Prolong Your Life?

Well, how much can you drink? (It better be a lot.)

Dan Nosowitz
The health benefits of resveratrol, a compound found in the skin of grapes (and thus in red wine), have long been known. Studies have indicated that it serves as an antioxidant, that it has anti-tumor properties, that it can help you live longer, and that it may be responsible for the "French paradox" (the French have a high-fat diet and yet low instances of health disease). A new study examined resveratrol's effects on melanoma, and found that it has anti-cancer properties. Cool! But, well, ignore.
First question: has resveratrol been proven to fight cancer? First answer, to that first question: Resveratrol has been studied significantly, but never in a clinical trial on humans. Yes, it's been tried on rats and mice, but only clinical trials on humans can say for sure whether a compound has a proven effect….. To get the amount of resveratrol from wine to equal the amount given to the animals in these studies, you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning a few times over.  Red wine has about 160 µg of resveratrol per ounce. Assuming each glass of wine has about five ounces, that's 800 µg per glass, or 0.0008 grams…..To read More….. http://www.popsci.com/article/science/can-red-wine-really-heal-cancer-and-prolong-your-life
Editor’s Note µg and mcg are both symbols for 'micrograms'. The correct symbol for microgram is actually µg. However, there is no way of typing that on a keyboard, so they came up with other versions, two of which are µg and mcg.

Bukovsky & Stroilov: "West's American Betrayal Will Make History"

By Diana West on Wednesday, November 27, 2013
After positively reviewing American Betrayal at Breitbart News at the end of September, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov found themselves subject to a flurry of attacks. They have now responded, not in kind but rather to explain why "a more intelligent debate" over the issues raised in American Betrayal is urgently needed despite what they call "the vehement campaign against the book."

From
Breitbart News:  "West's American Betrayal Will Make History" by Vladimir Bukovsky... Read More »

Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims

William J. Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter & Mark Burgman, 20 November 2013
This list will help non-scientists to interrogate advisers and to grasp the limitations of evidence, say William J. Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter and Mark A. Burgman.
Calls for the closer integration of science in political decision-making have been commonplace for decades. However, there are serious problems in the application of science to policy — from energy to health and environment to education…….Of course, others will have slightly different lists. Our point is that a wider understanding of these 20 concepts by society would be a marked step forward.
1.      Differences and chance cause variation.
2.      No measurement is exact.
3.      Bias is rife.
4.      Bigger is usually better for sample size.
5.      Correlation does not imply causation.
6.      Regression to the mean can mislead.
7.      Extrapolating beyond the data is risky.
8.     Beware the base-rate fallacy.
9.      Controls are important.
10.  Randomization avoids bias.
11.   Seek replication, not pseudoreplication.
12.  Scientists are human..
13.  Significance is significant.
14.  Separate no effect from non-significance.
15.   Effect size matters.
16.  Study relevance limits generalizations.
17.   Feelings influence risk perception.,
18.  Dependencies change the risks.
19.  Data can be dredged or cherry picked.
20. Extreme measurements may mislead.
To Read More……

The Fed Must Inflate

Mises Daily: Thursday, November 28, 2013 by Chris Martenson
The Fed is busy doing everything in its considerable power to get credit (that is, debt) growing again so that we can get back to what it considers to be “normal.”  But the problem is that the recent past was not normal. You may have already seen this next chart. It shows total debt in the U.S. as a percent of GDP: (Source).....
Somewhere right around 1980, things really changed, and debt began climbing far faster than GDP. And that, right there, is the long and the short of why any attempt to continue the behavior that got us to this point is certain to fail. It is simply not possible to grow your debts faster than your income forever. However, that’s been the practice since 1980, and current politicians and Federal Reserve officials developed their opinions about “how the world works” during the 33-year period between 1980 and 2013. 

Put bluntly, they want to get us back on that same track, and as soon as possible. The reason? Because every major power center, be that in D.C. or on Wall Street, tuned their thinking, systems, and sense of entitlement, during that period. And, frankly, a huge number of financial firms and political careers will melt away if and when that credit expansion finally stops. And stop it will; that’s just a mathematical certainty.......To Read More.....

From Patriot Update

Worst Two Words to a Liberal: “Christian Right” - November 27, 2013 by David L. Goetsch
To a liberal, the worst two words in the English language are “Christian Right.” For left-wing secular humanists, these two words conjure up images of Old Testament Pharisees who want to establish a theocracy on earth and stone to death all those who fall short of its tenets. Some humanists even consider the Christian Right to be one giant hate group. Apparently there are a lot of Americans who agree. In recent years there have been numerous books published proclaiming the Christian Right to be a dangerous group of theological fanatics determined to force all Americans to live by their values. Several of these books became bestsellers. One that springs immediately to mind is God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by the late Christopher

That's the question Micah Zenko poses at Foreign Policy. It's partly a rhetorical question meant to highlight a perceived double standard in how Israel's nuclear program is treated differently from Iran's--a double standard that isn't really one at all, since Israel is a democratic country and not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in any case. But it's also a practical question, because of the low probability that normal air strikes would be enough to destroy Iran's dispersed, secretive, and largely buried nuclear facilities.

More News…………

Knockdown games, bigoted receipts, and self-inflicted HIV

John Hayward
There’s a coincidental, but illuminating, confluence of “media mythology” stories at the moment. The first concerns a series of claims by wait staff that hateful, bigoted customers stiffed them for tips and wrote awful things on the receipt. First there was a waitress at a Red Lobster in Tennessee who claimed her customer wrote the N-word on a receipt, a story that gained national attention and led to her collecting over $10,000 in donations from sympathetic and/or outraged people across the country. Her story is almost certainly a hoax, based on handwriting analysis, the testimony of the allegedly offensive customer, and other data…..To Read More…..

New Material Posted on the NIPCC Web site

Responses of Marine Benthic Microalgae to Declining pH Values (26 Nov 2013) At a shallow-water cold-vent system releasing CO2 directly into the ocean off the island of Vulcano, NE Sicily, the stimulation of biomass in benthic assemblages was found to increase fivefold along a natural gradient of CO2 ranging from 419 to 1611 ppm... Read More
Fine-Tuning the Spatial Distributions of Species Thermal Habitats (26 Nov 2013) It makes a world of difference when assessing their ability to avoid warming-induced extinction, as the authors of this study conclude that thermal variability within 1-km2 units strongly increases local spatial buffering of future climate warming across Northern Europe, even in the flattest terrains, providing yet another example that this variability in temperature provides buffering to mitigate climate-change impacts... Read More
Cloud Tuning in a Malleable Climate Model (26 Nov 2013) The results of this analysis indicate that the simulated temperature trend best matches [the] observed trend when the model adopts the threshold [cloud particle] radius that worst reproduces satellite-observed microphysical statistics and vice versa, which represents a stunning admission of an equally stunning model failure... Read More
The Amundsen-Bellingshausen Seas Low in CMIP5 Climate Models (26 Nov 2013) This atmospheric phenomenon strongly influences the climate of West Antarctica, yet the results of this study show that the majority of CMIP5 models ... have a correspondingly poor representation of West Antarctic climate due to difficulties in representing the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Seas Low annual cycle, particularly its longitudinal position... Read More
Elevated CO2 Reduces Ceratocystis Wilt in Two Eucalyptus Clones (27 Nov 2013) Results from this study show that an increased CO2 concentration can reduce the severity of Ceratocystis wilt and stimulate the growth of Eucalyptus clonal plantlets. And it does it all at one and the same time... Read More
Modeling the West African Monsoon (27 Nov 2013) A study conducted in an effort to determine the degree to which several models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 (CMIP5) are able to reconstruct the past behavior of the West African Monsoon the reveals the CMIP5 models demand further work to achieve a reasonable realism... Read More
The Impacts of Business-As-Usual Projected Altered Temperature, Salinity and pCO2 on Filamentous Cyanobacteria of the Baltic Sea (27 Nov 2013) The pair of researchers who conducted this analysis conclude that he projected A1FI scenario [of future climate change] might be beneficial for the two species dominating the extensive summer blooms in the Baltic Proper... Read More