Thoughts on Global Warming - Bring It On: Greenland Used to be Green

I've been a little obsessed lately with trying to get up to speed on the whole climate change issue. I've been ignoring up until now. Nevertheless, my quick review of the available information tells me two things: 1) The link between increased CO2 and increased global temperatures is greatly exaggerated, and 2) The proposed fixes for the U.S. are a 90% reduction in our production of CO2 - and absurdly drastic and unrealistic remedy. I think the more people study up on this the more outraged they will become.

A couple of quick points bear mentioning. First, the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW)folks predicted that 2009 would be the hottest year ever and 2009 turned out to be an average year. Their prediction is based on the idea that increasing CO2 levels cause global warming. Since the world produces more CO2 each year, it would be shocking - from the point of view of their model - to see temperatures decline. The problem is that even their own data demonstrates that there is no causal relationship between these two factors. The cooler than predicted 2009 should cause grave doubts among the true believers who still think there is evidence of AGW. The video linked below will give you a nerdy look at the controversy going on behind the scenes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lt4vOp8QhY

Here's another quick YouTube video that demonstrates the failure of the AGW hypothesis that I learned from John Stossel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd7M4Hqwdbg

Take a look at Al Gore's global warming chart in An Inconvenient Truth. You'll see that increases in CO2 levels trail increases in temperatures. This is the EXACT opposite of what the ClimateGate folks' beloved models are predicting will happen.

Apparently, this is why the folks at University of East Anglia were scrambling to "trick" up their models to match their theories...and looking for ways to discredit and cut out their critics. I guess their use of tree rings to measure past temperatures wasn't so accurate looking into the past - during the Little Ice Age - or looking into the future - the last 20 years.

The reality is that climate change is a lot more complex than these folks suppose and they really don't have a strong, predictive model in place yet. For example, as the folks at Powerline indicate, it maybe that the SO2/sulfate being generated by the rising emissions from China is having a cooling effect on the planet.

One of the reasons I'm an "award-winning" political scientist is that I'm not blinded by conventional wisdom. I look at the facts.

Among these facts is the truth that Greenland, in warmer - pre-industrial - times, used to be green, that is covered with grass. To a certain extent, there is evidence that mankind would be better off if the Earth was a little warmer because it would encourage plant growth and longer growing seasons.

At any rate, what is shocking is that so many political types, including Al Gore, have relied on this faulty, dishonest science to promote a political agenda which is destructive to individual freedom. (Al Gore, for example, was recently caught lying by suggesting that these controversial e-mails were all over ten years old.)

Nevertheless, I've seen this before during the welfare reform debates of the 1990s. I was personally attacked because I believed the evidence which showed that welfare programs created poverty. Just because liberals don't have the evidence on their side never seems to keep them from thinking that they know best. Also, as a political scientist, I'm skeptical of scientists living off grants to study the AGW hypothesis. They are an interest group, pure and simple.

The Climategate e-mails are very helpful to all of us right now because they show how this modelling is completely dominated by politics - not hard science. I think anthropomorphic global warming is dead as a theory. It will take some time for the true believers to catch up to the reality that they've been had. As an ex-Marxist socialist myself, I feel their pain...

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Augustine 25 Remembers: Face to Face with the Young Barack Obama

As you may know, the girls at Occidental College liked to dress up young men and take their pictures. There are some famous pictures of the young Barack Obama while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA floating on the internet. Posted above, I have the rough equivalent from my own spell at this small liberal arts college. Personally, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that Obama mentions in his book, Dreams of My Father.

From what Obama writes, I guess I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. According to his book, Dreams of My Father, Obama got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in an anti-apartheid rally at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the fall of 1980.

I had graduated from Occidental College in 1979.

I met him later that same year in late December 1980. At the time, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to him and his friend Hassan.

My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality - particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.

What is significant to me now, in retrospect, was the way he conceded to my argument. At the time, I remember that this was an early victory in my life...the ability to make a powerful, fact-based argument that changed minds. In retrospect, I don't know if he was just trying to restore peace...my gut feeling is that I persuaded him - at the very least - that his education at Occidental College was not really up-to-date or terribly valuable.

Ironically, he ended up leaving Occidental College and transfering to Columbia University in 1981.

I can identify with those "intellectuals" who report that Obama is easy to talk to and seems to take advice well. I think I was one of the first to see this behavior in action...at least according to the timeline presented about his intellectual development in Dreams of My Father.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

GOP Victories Are Powerful Rebuke of Obama and Weaken His Political Power

The GOP win in NJ was a huge victory and a huge rebuke of Obama. Accordingly, this is an excellent time to recruit the next generation of conservative activists and political candidates.

Here’s my take on what these results in NJ and VA mean for President Obama.

First, it is clear now that Obama cannot help Democrats in tough elections. What ever influence Obama has over the voters cannot be spread over to benefit other candidates. This means that Obama’s political influence is weakening in line with his declining job approval numbers.

The White House is trying to make it look like Obama didn't even watch the election results. The reality, of course, is that Obama knows as well as I do that these elections were extremely important to his presidential power. Now, it is clear to the whole nation that Obama threw everything he had into electing Democrats in NJ and VA and couldn't make it happen. I watched some of Obama's passionate and emotional statements supporting Corzine and Deeds. He wasn't holding back at all. Obama placed his own administration's prestige on the line. Today, however, Obama looks like an empty suit...a loser...and a greatly weakened political leader.

Second, the suggestion that Obama was leading a massive realignment of our political system appears to be untrue. Reversals within the states he carried last year demonstrate that voters are not swept up with Obama’s radical, leftist agenda. Thus, Obama has lost the momentum and energy of his first year in office. As the voters learn the reality of his radical leftist agenda, they are turned off and eager to support anyone except Democrat party loyalists.

Finally, the newly emergent Tea Party movement appears to be more powerful and more energized than Obama’s base voters. The strength of this conservative, anti-Obama movement cannot be minimized any more by political pundits. This means that Democrat party over-reach will be punished in the upcoming mid-term elections. This is a great time to recruit the strongers Republican candidates. Next year will be a great time to be on the ballot.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thoughts on Ideological Perfection: Standing with Speaker Newt Gingrich in Newport Beach

Lincoln once said: "Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." In that spirit, Tricia and I did a crazy thing today and drove up to attend Speaker Newt Gingrich's book signing at the Barnes and Noble in Fashion Island, Newport Beach, CA.



It seemed like a crazy thing to do and so we did it. We drove along the coast and didn't have a clue where the bookstore was located. In the parking lot Tricia surprised me by asking some other folks for directions. We drove to the other side of the mall and were right in time to see Speaker Gingrich signing books with a thick felt tip pen.

I was first aware of Rep. Gingrich in 1988. I was a hopeless GOPAC candidate back back then and I was recruited by the local Republican party to play a small role in keeping some of Gov. Michael Dukakis' top lieutenants pinned down in MA instead of working for Gov. Dukakis in Iowa or where ever. The whole thing was a disaster, in part, because I was a registered Democrat at the time and needed to change my party registration and run for office at the same time.

Nevertheless, I listened to Rep. Newt Gingrich on tape for hours learning the details of how to run a political campaign. The summer I spent running for a state assembly seat in MA was one of the happiest of my life.

I wanted to use my scarce moments with Speaker Gingrich wisely so I shared with him something he probably already knew - that I had met the young Barack Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College and that he was definitely a Marxist at that time. "Did you ever think he would become President?" Gingrich asked. "No...never," I said, "he was a drinker and a drug user...a party guy when I knew him." After that, we fumbled through the photos and Speaker Gingrich was gracious and charming with us. He observed that I was "efficient" and sort of made my day.

In a larger sense, however, I was wanted to make the extra effort to see Speaker Gingrich today because he is taking heat for defending a liberal Republican running for office in New York's 23 Congressional District. This is a special election caused by Obama's willingness to attract an otherwise unbeatable GOP Congressman, John McHugh, into quitting Congress to become Secretary of the Army.

The liberal Republican candidate emerged, in part, because New York state law requires each party's 11 county chairmen in the district to pick their candidate. The local GOP county chairmen chose Dede Scozzafava, a five-term state assemblywoman. Unhappy with this result, one of the more conservative nomination seekers, Doug Hoffman, bailed on the Republican party and got into the same race through a different party affiliation - the Conservative Party.

Gov. Sarah Palin and a lot of other Republicans I admire have endorsed Hoffman. Gingrich, however, has pleaded with them to show more deference for the local New York Republican party. As you might suppose, Gingrich is in a lonely position right now. Nevertheless, I think he is right to suggest that we should be focusing more on our enemies and less on the qualifications of our Republican candidates. I think he is right to assert that a stress on ideological purity makes it impossible to assemble large majorities. Purges of imperfect Republicans is the sure road to minority party status.

Part of the reason why ideological purity burns out political parties is systemic. Our U.S. Constitution sets us up with single seat, majority rule Congressional elections. Such election rules are murder for third parties. Luckily for Republicans, however, only a small change in the electorate can produce broad and massive change in party control of Congress and subsequent public policy achievements. As such, I think Newt Gingrich is on the right track in asking for some ideological slack in an environment where the conventional wisdom is demanding righteous purity to Republican ideals.

All in all, it was a pleasure and an honor to met Speaker Newt Gingrich face-to-face today. I was proud to stand with him.

Repeating the New Deal: Evidence the Stimulus Made Things Worse

The folks at the Innocent Bystanders blog have been providing a wonderful service by tracking the current unemployment rate and comparing it to what Obama and his advisors predicted would happen - with and without the impact of their stimulus bill.



To those of us who study political economy, however, these results are not surprising since government spending programs take money from useful, high-return private investments and transfer it into low yield, wasteful government expenditures. To see how, FDR's New Deal programs actually lengthened and worsened the Great Depression, see Burton Folson, Jr.'s book, New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (2008).

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.