Here are a couple of good news items to pass along to you where liberalism has been rolled back, at least a bit. First, we have a major (and surprising) victory in the fight against illegal immigration coming from California:
Some more details:
Before you get too upset about this horrendous travesty against poor illegal immigrant students, take a look at some numbers:
This is not about being mean to illegals, it is about maintaining rational and reasonable priorities. Some will undoubtedly cry foul at this ruling and point to the high cost of education for illegal students, but I would cry foul and point to the high cost of education for American students. What we have in states all over the country is illegal students getting preferential treatment over legal American students, and that's just plain wrong! The illegal students shouldn't even be here, much less get enormous financial benefits for breaking the law.
This is a classic case of liberalism's backwardness harming real people, and in a time when education is already shaky, we simply cannot afford to mix up our priorities like this.
Next, we have some good news from down under:
Read the full article for all the details, but this is an outstanding encapsulation of what has happened over the past few years. The evidence actually goes against the theory -- and that's all it is, a completely unprovable theory -- that man is the cause of global warming. The Earth has its cycles, and we are merely seeing those cycles play out in nature. The thought that we are somehow responsible for those cycles is ludicrous, as any objective examination of the actual evidence -- not just the assertions -- will show.
I particularly like the last two points. To enact the sweeping environmental legislation that the liberal activists want would be to wreck the economy. I've blogged many times about the effects of those policies before, so if this is a new concept to you I suggest you click on a few of the links in my Core Principles and brush up. It's not rocket science, but it is something that is almost always misrepresented in the MSM. Anyway, to deliberately wreck the economy on the basis of hype rather than evidence is the height of stupidity and irresponsibility. Yet, that's what the Left would have us do.
If we are going to implement legislation to deal with climate change, then those who think it is necessary should have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that that legislation is needed. Until that happens, we need to reject every attempt by the so-called green movement to swing their wrecking ball into our economic high-rise.
There's my two cents.
A court has ruled that the DREAM Act in the Golden State (providing in-state college tuition breaks to illegal aliens while denying those benefits to law-abiding native Americans, naturalized Americans, and legal out-of-state residents) is in conflict with federal immigration law.
Some more details:
A state appellate court has put a financial cloud over the future of tens of thousands of undocumented California college students, saying a state law that grants them the same heavily subsidized tuition rate that is given to resident students is in conflict with federal law.
In a ruling reached Monday, the state Court of Appeal reversed a lower court's decision that there were no substantial legal issues and sent the case back to the Yolo County Superior Court for trial.
"It has a huge impact," said Kris Kobach, an attorney for the plaintiffs and a law professor at the University Missouri at Kansas City. "This is going to bring a halt to the law that has been giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants."
He said it is a big win for California taxpayers who have been subsidizing education for undocumented immigrants.
In a ruling reached Monday, the state Court of Appeal reversed a lower court's decision that there were no substantial legal issues and sent the case back to the Yolo County Superior Court for trial.
"It has a huge impact," said Kris Kobach, an attorney for the plaintiffs and a law professor at the University Missouri at Kansas City. "This is going to bring a halt to the law that has been giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants."
He said it is a big win for California taxpayers who have been subsidizing education for undocumented immigrants.
Before you get too upset about this horrendous travesty against poor illegal immigrant students, take a look at some numbers:
UC charges out-of-state students nearly $18,000 a year more than it charges resident and undocumented students who graduated from California high schools. At CSU, out-of-state students pay about $8,000 more. And at the state's 110 community colleges, they pay an average of about $160 a unit instead of $20 per unit - or $1,920 for a full load instead of $240.
This is not about being mean to illegals, it is about maintaining rational and reasonable priorities. Some will undoubtedly cry foul at this ruling and point to the high cost of education for illegal students, but I would cry foul and point to the high cost of education for American students. What we have in states all over the country is illegal students getting preferential treatment over legal American students, and that's just plain wrong! The illegal students shouldn't even be here, much less get enormous financial benefits for breaking the law.
This is a classic case of liberalism's backwardness harming real people, and in a time when education is already shaky, we simply cannot afford to mix up our priorities like this.
Next, we have some good news from down under:
On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN science body on this matter, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Four things have changed since 1998.
First, the new ice cores shows that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says that the carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises, and that there are more powerful forces on global temperatures than atmospheric carbon levels.
Second, there is now no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed), but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory. Comparisons of model outputs to observed results are not evidence because they cannot prove that the model is always right, only that it was right in some instances.
Third, the satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, that 1998 was the warmest recent year, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the last year (to the temperature of 1980). Land based temperature readings are corrupted by the 'urban heat island' effect—urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979.
Fourth, we looked for the greenhouse signature and could not find it.
These four changes have rendered our current debate over carbon emissions obsolete.
[N]ow that we are finally coming to terms with how expensive it will be to cut back our carbon emissions, the causes of global warming have suddenly become a topic of major economic importance.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the mind of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
Policy makers must grapple with the possibility that global temperatures don't rise over the next decade. Deliberately wrecking the economy for the reasons that later turn out to be bogus hardly seems like a recipe for electoral success.
The onus is on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN science body on this matter, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Four things have changed since 1998.
First, the new ice cores shows that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says that the carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises, and that there are more powerful forces on global temperatures than atmospheric carbon levels.
Second, there is now no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed), but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory. Comparisons of model outputs to observed results are not evidence because they cannot prove that the model is always right, only that it was right in some instances.
Third, the satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, that 1998 was the warmest recent year, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the last year (to the temperature of 1980). Land based temperature readings are corrupted by the 'urban heat island' effect—urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979.
Fourth, we looked for the greenhouse signature and could not find it.
These four changes have rendered our current debate over carbon emissions obsolete.
[N]ow that we are finally coming to terms with how expensive it will be to cut back our carbon emissions, the causes of global warming have suddenly become a topic of major economic importance.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the mind of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
Policy makers must grapple with the possibility that global temperatures don't rise over the next decade. Deliberately wrecking the economy for the reasons that later turn out to be bogus hardly seems like a recipe for electoral success.
The onus is on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary.
Read the full article for all the details, but this is an outstanding encapsulation of what has happened over the past few years. The evidence actually goes against the theory -- and that's all it is, a completely unprovable theory -- that man is the cause of global warming. The Earth has its cycles, and we are merely seeing those cycles play out in nature. The thought that we are somehow responsible for those cycles is ludicrous, as any objective examination of the actual evidence -- not just the assertions -- will show.
I particularly like the last two points. To enact the sweeping environmental legislation that the liberal activists want would be to wreck the economy. I've blogged many times about the effects of those policies before, so if this is a new concept to you I suggest you click on a few of the links in my Core Principles and brush up. It's not rocket science, but it is something that is almost always misrepresented in the MSM. Anyway, to deliberately wreck the economy on the basis of hype rather than evidence is the height of stupidity and irresponsibility. Yet, that's what the Left would have us do.
If we are going to implement legislation to deal with climate change, then those who think it is necessary should have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that that legislation is needed. Until that happens, we need to reject every attempt by the so-called green movement to swing their wrecking ball into our economic high-rise.
There's my two cents.
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