Crossposted from Flopping Aces

A Munich parallel as history repeats itself in Georgia!

Dick Morris reminds us that leading up to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and ultimately to the horror of World War II was the fomenting of native German unrest in Czechoslovakia providing an excuse for the Germans to invade.

It is a formula that we are witnessing again today as Russia has fomented unrest among the Russian population in a border province of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia as a pretext to invade and vanquish the entire sovereign nation.

More maps here, here and here. Interactive map here.

Russia has a long history of trying to control Georgia. But it wasn’t until the communist era when the republic was finally absorbed into the Soviet Union. The nation gave birth to Josef Stalin, the most infamous and deadly Soviet leader of the 20th Century.

Russia’s desire to control Georgia did not die with the Soviet Union. Under current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former President, pressure has continued to mount as Russian “peacekeepers” flooded into the areas of Georgia with large Russian populations.

U.S. Active in Countering Russian Malignancy

Under the leadership of President Bush, the U.S. has actively sought to strengthen ties with Georgia and help it maintain it’s independence.

Thousands gather in Freedom Square to hear President George W. Bush speak in Tbilisi, Georgia, Tuesday, May 10, 2005. “When Georgians gathered here 16 years ago, this square had a different name. Under Lenin’s steely gaze, thousands of Georgians prayed and sang, and demanded their independence, said President Bush. “The Soviet army crushed that day of protest, but they could not crush the spirit of the Georgian people.”

The President’s visit in 2005 was followed by repeated visits by U.S. leaders including a Senate delegation led by Senator John McCain in 2006. The focus of these visits is to preserve the independence of Georgia and offer it the assistance it needs.

Georgia has not been ungrateful. It sent 2,000 troops to aid coalition efforts in Iraq. Those troops are now being withdrawn to defend their homeland.

Russian Invasion Continues

Despite earlier hope of a ceasefire, Russian forces are now going beyond the original area of concern in South Ossetia and attacking targets throughout Georgia.

A Georgian woman is seen in her damaged apartment in Gori, Georgia, just outside the breakaway province of South Ossetia, Monday, Aug. 11, 2008. Russia warned Monday that its troops in Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia will cross into the Georgian-controlled territory if Georgian troops in the area refuse to disarm. ( AP Photo /Sergei Grits)

McCain Responds, Obama Flip Flops

While President Bush continues to press Russian leaders to stop their aggression (see here and here) and the U.N. Security Council meets to address this urgent issue, the response from the two presidential candidates is worth examining.

Curt noted that John McCain called the President of Georgia, whom he has meet on previous occasions, and issued this statement:

I again call on the Government of Russia to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its forces from the territory of Georgia. Given this threat to Euro-Atlantic security, I am pleased to see the United States, the European Union, and NATO acting together by sending a delegation to the region, in an effort to broker a cease fire. This is an important first step.

The United Nations has been prevented from taking any meaningful action by Russian objections. In view of this, I welcome the statements of democratic nations defending the sovereignty of Georgia and condemning Russian actions.

I strongly support the declaration issued by the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their commitment that ‘aggression against a small country in Europe will not be passed over in silence or with meaningless statements equating the victims with the victimizers.’
–John McCain

Obama’s response was more of the same moral equivalence crapola that dictators have used throughout the 20th Century to excuse their actions.

I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war.
–Barack Hussein Obama

Only later did Obama issue a stronger statement which recognized Russia’s impartiality as a “peacekeeper.”

I’m not the only one who noticed that John McCain seems to have been awake when the 3 AM phone call came in:

• The Washington Post’s David Broder: “It’s Particularly A Moment Where John McCain Can Claim To Have Been Prescient.”
• The Politico’s Jonathan Martin: John McCain “Appears To Have Been Ahead Of The Curve In His Assessment That Moscow Was The Bad Actor Here.”
• Chicago Tribune’s Jill Zuckman: “It’s Not Just This Part Of The World, But Senator McCain Has Been To So Many Exotic Places Like Waziristan And South Ossetia, And He’s Very Comfortable With These Issues. He Knows What He Thinks.” (”Fox News Sunday,” 8/10/08)
• The Washington Post’s George Will: “Certainly Their Initial Responses, They Were, As You Say, Different. Mr. Obama’s Initial Response Was To Say That Both Should Show Restraint: The Invader And The Invaded. That’s Not What’s Going On Here.” (video here)
• The New York Times’ Matt Bai: McCain “Does Understand What’s Happening In That Region.”

Georigans are now begging for help from the U.S. They deserve our support. They also deserve world leadership that recognizes who is at fault and doesn’t simply provide cover for aggression under the false flag of moral equivalence.

also:

Global Warming Wrapup: Global Warming Swindle Maker Answers Critics, Environazi Decries Carbon Trading Industry, Former Climate Activist Turned Skeptic, The Global Myth by Edmund Contoski, John Edwards Hypocrisy, The Unsettled Science & The Polls That Prove It

(h/t Tom Nelson)

Up first is the maker of the excellent film, The Global Warming Swindle, and how he was vilified but ultimately found to be correct:

As it happens, I have made a number of science documentaries debunking irrational scare stories, and the greens have had a whack at me before – scares are the oxygen of the green movement. And I know from experience how illiberal these liberals are. But even I have been stunned by the sustained ferocity of their response to Swindle.

Besides a vitriolic campaign in the press, the instrument of their fury has been Ofcom. A swift internet campaign rallied the troops. Hundreds of complaints were sent off, many using the same phrases and displaying a surprisingly good knowledge of the Ofcom code.

Every line in the film was subjected to scorn. The contributors were all in the pay of baby-strangling capitalists. As for me? I was a member of the special steering committee of the World Congress of Science Producers. I had recently won an award from the British Medical Association for making the best science documentary of the year. But now I was “worse than a child abuser”.

One complaint stood out. It ran to 200 pages and was orchestrated by three “concerned citizens”. It claimed to be peer-reviewed, which it wasn’t. But it was backed by the great and good of the global warming brigade.

Our response was long and detailed: 300 pages, not counting supporting science papers etc. What has been the result?

To heighten the dramatic effect, let’s compare Gore’s beloved Inconvenient Truth with Swindle. The veracity of Al’s film was tested in the High Court, when a lorry driver from Kent baulked at the prospect of his taxes being spent on disseminating it to British schools.

The verdict was a blow to the greens. Mr Justice Burton cited at least nine significant “errors” in Gore’s film. Using words such as “alarmism” and “exaggeration”, the judge said the film couldn’t be sent out to schools without a health warning.

Harrabin wrote a piece admitting he had thought the film was a bit off when he first saw it. Did he indeed? So why didn’t he tell the rest of us? What do we pay him for? And how about all those “scientists” who, to their eternal shame, lined up to heap praise on the film?

Now let’s look at Swindle. The global warmers made buckets of complaints to Ofcom that the science was wrong, that the film contained hundreds of factual errors, falsifications and misrepresentations. It was, in short, unscientific and scurrilous.

How many of these complaints did Ofcom uphold? Not one.

How about the cries from some environazi’s that enough is not being done….because people are getting rich from a market segment created by the very same environazi’s….carbon trading:

But what are we to do? All our policies to date to tackle global warming have been miserable failures. The Kyoto protocol has created a vast carbon market but done little to reduce emissions. The main effect of the EU’s emissions trading scheme has been to transfer about €30bn or more from consumers to Europe’s biggest polluters, the power companies. The EU and US foray into biofuels has, at huge cost, increased greenhouse gas emissions and created a world food crisis, causing starvation in many poor countries.

~~~

So are all our efforts doomed to failure? Yes, so long as our governments remain craven to special interests, whether carbon traders or fossil fuel companies. The carbon market is a valuable tool, but must be subordinate to climatic imperatives. The truth is that to prevent runaway greenhouse warming, we will have to leave most of the world’s fossil fuels in the ground, especially carbon-heavy coal, oil shales and tar sands. The fossil fuel and power companies must be faced down.

~~~

The answer? Scrap national allocations and place a single global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, applied “upstream” – for instance, at the oil refinery, coal-washing station and cement factory. Sell permits up to that cap in a global auction, and use the proceeds to finance solutions to climate change – accelerating the use of renewable energy, raising energy efficiency, protecting forests, promoting climate-friendly farming, and researching geoengineering technologies. And commit hundreds of billions of dollars per year to finance adaptation to climate change, especially in poor countries.

Here is a typical story we hear about. A layperson see’s Al Gore’s film and becomes a greenie overnight, only to be disappointed in the science later:

In September 2007 I became very concerned about global warming after seeing Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. The film was being screened by our local nature conservation groups; everyone was saying this was an important film. Al Gore showed graphically powerful evidence of the correlation between rising carbon dioxide levels and global temperature rise in the last century. He used a graph which is a “hockey stick” shape, showing a millennium of steady global temperatures, followed by a dramatic temperature rise as the last century progressed. He showed this together with Keeling’s compelling zigzag graph showing rising CO2 levels, to demonstrate graphically how the two had risen together. He showed disasters worldwide, including Hurricane Katrina, which are all apparently getting worse as temperatures rise; he said it had to be manmade CO2 emissions that were the cause of the rising CO2 level, since our emissions was the only thing that had changed. And the rising CO2 must have caused these temperature rises, since, again, there was nothing else. A study by Naomi Oreskes appeared to prove that a complete consensus of scientists were portraying a very serious picture - threatening our whole future - unless we drastically lower our carbon dioxide emissions, and unless we act quickly. Al Gore said that the only scientists doubting this now were either kooks or crooks. It seemed there was no serious scientific dissent from the picture of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW - manmade global warming). The message was then reinforced for me a little later by the top NASA scientist James Hansen’s report about potentially catastrophic levels of polar ice melt. I’ve always checked evidence as I’ve seen so much bad science - but all my checks seemed to confirm Al Gore.

It’s a long story about how she become a uber activist and did her best to refute skeptics, that is until she started checking out the information given by those skeptics:

Suddenly there opened up for me a cascade of doubts concerning the trustworthiness of Al Gore’s claims of scientific consensus over global warming, and the “hockey stick” graph that he used in An Inconvenient Truth (AIT). Al Gore maintained that CO2 is driving temperature change now, and he neatly juxtaposed words and pictures to imply that the geological records showed that CO2 has always driven temperature changes. Whereas in fact, the records show that CO2 lags behind big temperature changes by around 800 years (but on a geological time scale, this lag appears so small that you don’t see it unless you look close). Gore made claims of “extreme conditions”… (serious sea level rise, serious droughts here, serious floods there, more tornadoes, more serious hurricanes like Katrina, glaciers melting fast, ice-sheets cracking up, the Gulf Stream shutting down, heatwaves killing people) …and other “plagues”… (tropical diseases spreading, lakes drying out, polar bears dying out) already happening and likely to getting worse, …as a result of global warming. He calls carbon dioxide a pollutant. I discovered that…

… every single claim of An Inconvenient Truth can be refuted as cherrypicking, false, or otherwise critically misleading, as has been shown particularly well by Monckton’s “35 Errors in AIT” [2], “Falsehoods in Gore’s AIT” by Wm Johnson [3], and “Convenient Fibs” by Prof. Rossiter [4]. Here was weighty, informed evidence on all counts against Al Gore, that I could not refute.

~~~

Everywhere I now looked, I was seeing the evidence differently. How could I have been so mistaken before? Was I really that mistaken? How could Al Gore be so mistaken? How could he have slipped through the checks and balances of Science, if he really was that misleading or misled? How could so many worthy scientists be so mistaken? Perhaps, if I looked harder, I’d find that science did have answers after all? For a while I bounced uncomfortably from one side to the other as challenge after challenge appeared. But every time I dug deeper, I found fraud and bad science, and more and more proof of no AGW. But what does this say about those who have knowingly promoted an empty, misleading, expensive science where the prime evidence disappears in every direction? It’s The Emperor’s New Clothes!

The Global Myth by Edmund Contoski:

During the 20th century, the earth warmed 0.6 degree Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit), but that warming has been wiped out in a single year with a drop of 0.63 degree C. (1.13 F.) in 2007. A single year does not constitute a trend reversal, but the magnitude of that temperature drop — equal to 100 years of warming — is noteworthy. Of course, it can also be argued that a mere 0.6 degree warming in a century is so tiny it should never have been considered a cause for alarm in the first place. But then how could the idea of global warming be sold to the public? In any case, global cooling has been evident for more than a single year. Global temperature has declined since 1998. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide has gone in the other direction, increasing 15–20%. This divergence casts doubt on the validity of the greenhouse hypothesis, but that hasn’t discouraged the global warming advocates. They have long been ignoring far greater evidence that the basic assumption of greenhouse warming from increases in carbon dioxide is false.

~~~

Why is it that the global warming advocates are unfazed by any contrary evidence, no matter how strong? All their claims of disasters from global warming have been debunked. All their computer models have been shown to be false, to be based on flawed assumptions, incapable of being reconciled with the observable facts. Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic and a university professor before he became president, is the author of a book on global warming and has spoken often on the subject. He says, “What frustrates me is the feeling that everything has already been said and published, that all rational argument has been used, yet it does not help.” It does not help because global warming alarmism is not based on rational argument. It is not based on science. It is not based on reality. It is based on political ideology. If rational argument doesn’t fit, then phony arguments must be invented: the spread of malaria, the loss of biological diversity, polar bears disappearing, etc. If computer models can predict disaster scenarios only by programming unrealistic assumptions, then that will be done. If global warming does not fit the observable temperature measurements, then a new “reality” must be invented to fit the ideology: the actual temperature records must be altered or dismissed. The global warming advocates are not disturbed by all this because, in their view, ideology trumps reality.

Patrick Moore, a cofounder and director of Greenpeace, resigned because of its “trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas.” After the failure of communism, he says, there was little public support for collectivist ideology. In his view, a “reason environmental extremism emerged was because world communism failed, the [Berlin] wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activists moved into the environmental movement bringing their neo-Marxism with them and learned to use green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anticapitalism and antiglobalism than they do anything with ecology or science.”

“I think if we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically,” said Judi Bari, principal organizer of Earth First!

~~~

Do you ever wonder how communism could last for 70 years in Russia? Surely there was plenty of evidence, for decades, that the system was failing: food shortages, declining life expectancy, increased infant mortality, low standards of living, primitive hospitals, and sanitation facilities lagging far behind those in Western Europe and America — not to mention pollution far worse than in the West. But to diehard communists, the facts did not matter. All the observable negatives of collectivism were trumped by ideology. The same is true of the ideology behind global warming.

Tom Nelson on John Edwards hypocrisy:

Edwards calls global warming ‘great moral test’ -

NEW ORLEANS - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Saturday called reversing global warming a “great moral test” and said the next president needs to stand up to industries resisting change.

“This is the great moral test of our generation. Are we actually going to leave this planet and America better for our children than we found it?” Edwards said at an environmental rally in New Orleans.

“Why have we not addressed the issue of climate change and global warming?” Edwards said. “I’ll tell you why, no question about it: oil companies, gas companies, power companies and the lobbyists in Washington, D.C. We have to have a president who will stand up to these people.”

LiveLeak.com - John Edwards: March 13th Bennett College

Edwards on Global Warming: ‘This is an emergency’ ‘It’s a frightening thing’ ‘It’ll make world war look like like heaven’

Check out some facts in this article:

We Aren’t Responsible for Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: A Note from Alan Siddons

And here is a good article that display just how much the science is NOT settled:

What you hear about global warming can vary as much as, well, the weather. One day, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is quoted saying: “We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.”

Another day, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says this: “Americans are coming to understand that global temperatures have actually cooled over the last 10 years and are predicted to continue cooling over the next 10.”

On another day, dozens of papers proclaim that the sun is at fault, since the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research demonstrated that the sun has burned brighter in the last 60 years than any time in the last 1,100 years, or 8,000 years, depending on the news source.

Most climatologists maintain that global warming is real and human activity is likely the major contributor. They believe that as we release more CO2 into the atmosphere, the planet will get hotter. (ed. Most? Puhlease….)

The contradictory statements tend to cluster around a couple of sticking points: the heating trend over the last few years, the influence of the sun, and the lessons from the distant past.

Where there’s good agreement is laid out by MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen, a critic of Al Gore and others he considers alarmists. In an editorial for the Wall Street Journal several years ago called “Climate of Fear,” he wrote that he agrees that global temperature has risen about a degree (Celsius) since the late 19th century.

He also agrees with most other climatologists that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by about 30 percent over the same period, and that CO2 should contribute to future warming, thanks to basic atmospheric physics.

Lindzen, however, said in a recent interview that the carbon dioxide buildup may not be causing the current warming trend, and it therefore may not play a significant role in the future climate.

And the trend may already have turned around, he said. “If you look from 1995 you don’t see any change that could be regarded as statistically significant . . . . For the last 13 or 14 years nothing has been happening.”

On that note comes this poll with some interesting numbers:

Only 25% (question 2) of those surveyed thought that global warming was the world’s single biggest environmental problem (multiple responses accepted). This is down from 33% last year.

Only 30% (question 3) trust the things that scientists say about the environment “completely” or “a lot”.

Only 33% (question thought that a rise in the world’s temperatures was caused by “things people do”, down from 41% last year.

Only 33% (question 18) thought that “most scientists” agree with one another about the causes of global warming, and only 33% thought that “most scientists” agree with one another about how much of a threat global warming poses.

Ah yes, but the science is settled eh?