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CHICAGO IL – On Tuesday, November 24th 2009, We Are Change Chicago attended a book signing with former vice president Al Gore, at the Borders Bookstore on 150 N. State Street.

The previous Thursday, news had begun to circulate that hacked documents and communications from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) had been published to the internet. The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change. Please review ClimateGate for Dummies.

To ensure the public that the media and Al Gore are aware of the facts that prove global warming to be a hoax, patriots from WAC Chicago marched to the book signing. Scattered throughout a crowd of a few hundred were members of WAC Chicago ready to ask Al Gore what he thought about ‘ClimateGate.’

http://www.wearechangechicago.com/

The 350th anniversary of Britain’s Royal Society (making it the world’s oldest scientific institution) will be marked by the release of a vast library of papers online from the likes of Sir Isacc Newton and Benjamin Franklin. This isn’t just science nerd stuff, though. This is a treasure trove of history that is easily connected to modern scientific thought.

The library itself can be found at trailblazing.royalsociety.org and is remarkable in its extensiveness. As usual, I’m reading a bunch of books and making miniscule progress on each. However, one that has my interest is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, a steampunk alternate history involving key figures in the 19th century Royal Society. If I cared to know more about the real advances with which the Society was involved, their Trailblazing website would be a fine place to start.

Royal Society papers provide science, history resources | Education IT | ZDNet.com

McCain blocking USDA nominees over Arizona snow

Sen. John McCain has a message for the Agriculture Department: “Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow (in Arizona)!”

The former Republican presidential candidate said he will block the confirmation of USDA nominees until the U.S. Forest Service allows an Arizona ski resort to make artificial snow with treated wastewater.

McCain’s decision means at least two USDA nominees remain in limbo awaiting Senate confirmation, according to The Post’s Head Count. President Obama has not nominated anyone to fill three other political positions at USDA.

McCain and Grand Canyon State colleague Jon Kyl (R) first wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in June asking why the Forest Service had not approved the Arizona Snowbowl’s request to use snowmaking equipment on its peaks in the Coconino National Forest.

The agency has the legal right to approve the request following years of litigation by several Native American tribes that had fought to block the use of snowmaking equipment on mountains they consider sacred. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the tribes’ case in June. Snowbowl officials have said they will not move ahead until they get final clearance from Washington, and they’re still waiting.

“The Department continues to delay this project despite repeated requests to move forward from Arizona Snowbowl, myself, and fellow members of the Arizona Congressional delegation,” McCain wrote last week in another letter to Vilsack.

“I find the department’s conduct in this matter to be most troubling and disingenuous,” McCain wrote. “It is wholly inappropriate that without any legitimate explanation the Department can claim the right to delay an approved Forest Service action upheld by the Supreme Court. Quite frankly, every public land user and Forest Service permittee should be deeply troubled by the Administration’s actions.”

“Please be assured that I will maintain my hold all USDA nominees over this matter,” McCain said.

The Forest Service “is moving forward on a portion of the Snowbowl permit improvement request,” according to a USDA spokesman. The portion focuses on the use of snowmaking machines at the resort’s beginner ski area, known as the “magic carpets.”

The department has delayed further approving the project as Snowbowl officials and representatives for the Native American tribes attempt to sort out “outstanding concerns for the more controversial aspects of the Snowbowl improvement request,” the spokesman said.

via Federal Eye – McCain blocking USDA nominees over Arizona snow.

The  “outstanding concerns” are using reclaimed waste water for the snow making machines or in other words polluting the mountain and all that lies below it.

China, moreover, is possessed, like the West, with its own form of universalism. It long believed that it was “the land under heaven,” the center of the world, superior to all other cultures. That sense of self, which has engendered a powerful self-confidence, has been persistently evident over the last 40 years, but with China’s rise, it is becoming more apparent as the country’s sense of achievement and restoration gains pace. Or to put it another way, when the presidents of China and the United States meet in Beijing in 2019, with the Chinese economy fast approaching the size of the American economy, we can be sure that the Chinese sense of hubris will be far stronger than in 2009.

Understanding China — latimes.com.

Why the push to regulate the Fed more tightly, with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and member of Financial Services Committee; James Reynolds, Loop Capital Markets; and CNBC’s Rick Santelli, Steve Liesman, Joe Kernen & Becky Quick.

Airtime:
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Mon. Nov. 23 2009 | 7:40 AM ET

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1339737581&play=1

A congressional plan to audit the Federal Reserve’s decision-making process poses a serious threat to the economy, former Fed official Frederic Mishkin said.

In a live interview on CNBC, Mishkin disagreed strongly with a plan being pushed by Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican and leading Fed critic.

“This is I think the most serious attack that I’ve seen on the Federal Reserve in the many, many years that I’ve studied it as a scholar,” said Mishkin, an economist at Columbia Business School who was affiliated with the Fed in various capacities from 1994-2006. “This is really dangerous stuff.”

via Ron Paul’s Plan to Audit Fed a ‘Serious Attack’: Mishkin – Law and Regulation * US * News * Story – CNBC.com.

The documents, hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K., show that some climate researchers declined to share their data with fellow scientists, and sought to keep researchers with dissenting views from publishing in leading scientific journals.

Separately, Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), an outspoken critic of the view that humans are causing global warming, said that in light of the emails, he will call for an investigation into the state of climate science if the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works doesn’t act soon.

Amid the furor over the released documents, more than two dozen climate scientists will release a report Tuesday arguing that the effects of man-made global warming have intensified in recent years.

via Lawmakers Probe Climate Emails – WSJ.com.

The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses.

The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.

“We wouldn’t be looking at it if it was a civil matter,” says Mark White, spokesman for the FBI’s Dallas office. “And a judge wouldn’t sign a federal search warrant if there wasn’t probable cause to believe that a fraud took place and that the equipment we asked to seize had evidence pertaining to the criminal violation.”

In interviews with Threat Level, companies affected by the raids say they’ve lost millions of dollars in equipment and business after the FBI hauled off gear belonging to phone and VoIP providers, a credit card processing company and other businesses that housed equipment at the centers. Nobody has been charged in the FBI’s investigation.

via FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Two top Democrats say they want to impose a new tax on the wealthy to finance any increase in U.S. troops for the Afghanistan war.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the purse string-controlling House Appropriations Committee, is calling the idea a “war surtax.” He said that just as the federal government is expected to pay for its proposed intervention in the health care sector with new taxes, any escalated involvement in Afghanistan should come with a payment plan.

“If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well … by having a war surtax,”

Obey told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday. “The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that has to sacrifice are military families and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is making a similar demand.

Lawmakers Propose ‘War Surtax’ to Pay for Troop Increase in Afghanistan – FOXNews.com

Ya right!

A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I’ve ever seen.

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

Britain’s new Internet law as bad as everyone’s been saying.

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