Post Thanksgiving Ramblings: Troop Surge, Anger at Federal Gov't, etc.

First, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My brother Lee is working an honest job again for the first time since 1991. He's got a tough, rugged and uphill road to travel on but he's made some good first steps. I'm contributing in my own little way but this is about Lee, not me, so suffice it to say that I hope that Lee will continue to contact me to report "good news" and that he will also contact me when he needs support. My son Christopher, a Lance Corporal in the Marines, returned safely from his first overseas deployment and is currently spending time with us here in Phoenix. He looks great. He's about to be reassigned to a new infantry unit and the odds of that new unit going to Afghanistan is about 100%. His opinion concerning the news that President Obama has signed an order authorizing 30,000 additional troops for the Afghanistan theater of operations was typically Marine blunt: "About damn time. And we could use more guys." My wife is recovering from her throat surgery and is now doing fidgety projects about the house. Every time that happens, I end up spending more money. Oh well. It helps the economy, right? And my daughter Heather and her hubby Mat are settling in beautifully in their new home. I am also grateful that my Mother is now living with me and that we were also able to have my In-Laws in town for the holiday. That's right! I get along with my In-Laws! It doesn't get much better than that.

Second: President Obama today signed orders to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. I think this is the right decision. Of course, the minute that President Obama starts acting like an actual Commander-in-Chief, the liberal base that helped elect him starts chewing on him. Representative David Obey (D-WI) stated that propping up a corrupt regime is "a fool's errand". Does he forget that Afghanistan is where our current conflict with militant Islamic jihad started? If we do not eliminate the Taliban then Afghanistan will once again be the favored location to train young Muslims in the ways of terror attacks to be used against the West. I believe that this new 30,000 is only the start. I also believe, as President Bush predicted, that the "War on Terror" will be a generational conflict fought out over decades, with the ultimate result the elimination of militant Islam fundamentalists or the adoption by all the world of sharia (sp). Who will win? I wonder.

Third: The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has stated that it's own peer-review policies would negate the attempts by a "small segment" ofpro-AGW (anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming) scientists to stifle dissenting opinion in scientific discussions and journals as well as to skew the data to make it look more dramatic. These efforts have come to light because of a hacker's successful intrusion into the University of East Anglia's email system and the dump of over 100 gigabytes (one billion characters per gigabyte) of emails onto the internet. In the center of this growing controversy is Professor Phil Jones, who is the head of UoEA's climate research department. In 2004, an email from him allegedly supported the rejection of at least two dissenting research papers because they were "'flawed" and yet he indicated in the same email that if necessary, he would support changing the peer-review process to facilitate prevention of the publication of dissenting opinions. The jury is still out on whether Prof. Jones was simply venting in a private email or that he was alluding to actual intentions or actions. To be fair, I think it is safe to say that we have all written things in personal correspondence that should not be taken literally (eg: "I'm gonna kill him!"). Contrarily, scientists have a responsibility to be detached and objective to their research and that such comments coming from such an influential member of the pro-AGW camp, especially in light of the fact that AGW is not a "settled" science, smacks of a scientific inquisition.

A far more worrisome issue is the confirmation by certain scientists at UoEA that they have destroyed much of the raw temperature data that was used to predict global warming. This means that other scientist cannot independently verify their assumptions. This revelation was obtained after a request for the raw data was made under the UK's Freedom of Information Act. The only data still available is the revised "quality assured and homogenized" data. The revisions were made for the stated purpose of adjusting the data to reflect variables in the way the data was collected. The raw data was not saved when the Climate Research Unit moved to a new facility.