Open Thread (5/13/2008)

Presumptive Presumptuous Republican Democrat (who can tell for sure?) Candidate John McCain demonstrates his whor...uh...flexibility on issues once again, regarding what some on the faux right delicately call "climate change" and others call  "the big lie" regarding "global warming".  Look how McCain proposes to sell us out to his socialist-fascist agenda. 

"For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one direction — toward machines, methods and industries that used oil and gas," McCain said. "Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs we weren't counting."

Those costs, in the form of greenhouse gases, can no longer be ignored, McCain said. He hopes to create a profit motive that works in the opposite direction — encouraging polluters to cut their carbon emissions. As president, McCain would cap overall production of greenhouse gases. Companies that produce more pollution would then have to buy carbon credits from those who find a cleaner way of doing business.

More good news here: www.allamericanpatriots.com/48747357_john-mccains-strategy-confronting-global-warming

More wars.  Less jobs.  More taxes.  More Regulation.  More profit motives that work in the opposite direction.   That's why, My Friends, you should back John McCain.

Even though it hasn't gotten any warmer.

Even though the cap-and-trade systems do not work.

Even though if the cap-and-trade systems worked to their utmost theoretical limit, it would not stop global warming.

It's all a scam to gain power, both for himself (in getting elected) and for government generally.

It looks like I'm writing in Mickey Mouse again.

See the Academy, where we start at pretension and never look back.

I agree with you Oil Man there is no reason for delay. Just a guess but I would say the city is delaying the finish because Curtis road could not handle the increased heavy traffic. I guess when they start construction of Curtis that will slow the traffic or keep some of it detoured naturally and help Curtis last a long enough that the work will been done.

The IDOT sign says it will open May 16 (this Friday). 

I commute past both interchanges every day.  Yes, really.

The Champaign crew messed around last fall and got caught by the winter weather, putting the thing on hold while the ground was too soft to work.  The climate is subtly different in Champaign and Mattoon.  There are many days when Champaign gets snow or sleet, while Mattoon gets sleet or rain, for instance.

Also, the projects themselves were slightly different.  The Champaign project had to accomodate a city sewer run, while Mattoon had an existing Interstate pond to cross.

Between the climatic difference and the graft, it just took longer.

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See the Academy, where we start at pretension and never look back.

One of those interesting little things on the new interchange is the sign which is visibile on the westbound lane of Curtis that reads, "Next Right to Champaign". It's located at a spot which is already in Champaign.

However I'm told there is a similar sign at Olympia and I-57 which states "Next Left to Champaign" which is also in the Champaign city limits

Just open the exit - it will save me six miles on my trip home  ;-)

Greg Novak

Even though it hasn't gotten any warmer.

Sigh.

Yeah you'd have to be a commie or a liberal to think there was a trendline there.

I read an article in the Spingfield paper that IDOT is out of gas--they're only able to respond to emergencies--so maybe that has something to do with the interchange.

The school sales tax proposal is getting a lot of radio play today.  Has any prominent local liberal come forward yet to denounce this regressive tax?  Is the U of I Senate going to fight this as unfair taxation on students?

Looks like until about 1935 the mean was below average. Where does the "average" come from? What does it mean that it was below average for quite a while before that?

Note: I'm not climatologist and I haven't read the papers concerned, so I'm just making an educated guess here. You're asking why are the numbers before about 1935 less than zero? (Average isn't really the right term here.) Note that they y-axis is labeled "Temperature anomaly". That suggests to me they're measuring the difference between each year's value and some reference point. Judging from the graph, it looks like 1960 may have been chosen to be zero. What's important in this sort of graph is not whether or not the temperature is 21 or 22 degrees, but whether the temperature is trending from year to year. It's the same sort of thing as when you're looking at economic data and everything is given in "2005 dollars".

Graph taken from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

Analysis of the temperature data from the University of Illinois Weather Station in Urbana shows that by far the hottest years were in the 1930's, and that indeed we are in a cooling trend the past few years, not to mention the current long cold winter that just wont go away.  I sure wish that some of our leftist friends would desist from their activities and cut us a little slack.  Could y'all please increase your Carbon Footprints just a little?  Hey, we are freezing over here.

Major resource shifts will always lead to scarcity, famine, and war.

Major resource shifts, like trying to stop the usage of oil and coal? 

Remember, the Cheney Doctrine was that if there was even a 1% chance that Saddam had WMDs, we had to act as if he did. What if there's even a 1% chance that climate change will be harmful?

The chance for success in disarming Saddam were what?  close to 100% I think. 

What are the chances that cap-and-trade, ethanol, windmills, and hybrid cars in America is going to stop global warming, according to the models?

Yeah, but were you downloading a ringtone at the same time?