LOS ANGELES -- The proliferation of drifting Antarctic icebergs caused by rising temperatures is creating a vast new ecosystem of plankton and krill that may have the power to absorb some of the carbon dioxide that is driving global warming, scientists reported yesterday.
The researchers, led by oceanographer Kenneth Smith Jr. of California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, found that these iceberg-associated communities may cover a significant portion of Antarctic seas.
The ecosystem uses photosynthesis to take carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into plant life and other forms of organic carbon that can be held in the ocean.
"I think it can be a substantial contribution" to reducing carbon dioxide levels, Smith said. "These things have been ignored forever."
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.
If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming. ...
It's a must read... at least if you want to get past the monstrous ego and neediness of Al Gore and back to reality on the hyper-dramatized and hyper-hyped topic of global temperatures. Sheesh.
Something is rotten in the state of England. A series of recent decisions and proclamations by prestigious English institutions reveals an indifference to its own English way of life and a submission to brazen demands made by domestic Islamic groups which could forever diminish the historic English culture. In addition, British organizations are issuing alarming statements telegraphing an official loathing of America and Israel. In fact, a German author has aptly entitled a recent book warning of the pervasive obsequiousness weakening today’s England and Europe: "Hurray, We are Capitulating."
A highly vocal Islamic group in England is demanding that British public schools reshape entire curricula and school activities to conform to Islamic beliefs and attitudes so that Moslem students feel comfortable. In effect, English schools may begin looking and acting more like Islamic schools than what has been the traditional English one. Infected by political correctness and multiculturalism, many top British officials and its Department of Education seem ready to begin testing the "plan", though it will probably result in the discomfort of the millions of majority students who are not Moslem and impose behaviors that effectively sideline British ways in Britain itself.
Schools may soon be required to have separate swimming for boys and girls and require that girls and boys wear swimsuits covering from the neck to the knee. If such a request had come from the Church of England it would have, for certain, been summarily shot down. Certain sports, such as tennis, alien to many Islamic countries, as well as other recreational activities may soon be prohibited. There will be times set aside for prayer, with designated Islamic prayer rooms and rugs; no meat will be served during the month of Ramadan and pork will be prohibited in school throughout the entire year. There are many more demands. ...
1) A Universal Civil Right. No one has a right to immigrate to America. There is a substantial segment of the open borders cult (primarily its left wing) that seems to think that America, and the right to come here at will, is some sort of basic human right possessed by all people. Let me assure you that this is not the case. I do not have the right to barge into Mexico without the permission of the Mexicans, nor does any non-citizen have the right to barge into America without the permission of we Americans. There is not a liberal in the world that would feel sorry for me if I were arrested for sneaking into France or Canada in violation of their laws. Likewise, they should not feel sorry for anyone arrested for sneaking into America -- unless they wish to argue that Americans should have fewer rights than other people.
2) An Economic Opportunity Zone For The World. There is another segment of the open borders crowd (assorted nuts, drawn from both wings) that believes that the real purpose of America is to provide economic opportunity for all the world’s poor. The world’s poor are measured in BILLIONS. There is not enough opportunity even in a land as free and productive as America to fill that need. Secondly, America is productive and free because that is ingrained in our culture. If we accept more immigrants than we can realistically transmit that culture of freedom and productivity to, then we will have killed the goose that laid the dollar denominated golden eggs. There will then be neither wealth nor freedom for any of us. There is a reason that much of the world is squalid and oppressed -- it is ingrained in certain cultures. Why would we want to import such cultures faster than we can change them through assimilation?
3) A Human Petting Zoo. Some people seem to think that America needs to acquire new people the same way Angelina Jolie acquires new kids -- based on a need to have one of every kind to complete the whole set! Diversity is great and all, but it is hardly a sound primary basis for a united national character. I assure you that the American people are a fine people, not in need of wholesale replacement. It’s OK to be just the way we are. I’m OK. You’re OK.
4) A Lawless Free-for-All. I am for free markets. I am for free people. I am not for a lawless free-for-all in which ambitious (or merely selfish) citizens get to pick and choose which laws they will obey (or insist that I obey) and which laws they will simply ignore because they want more money. If Tyson Foods thinks it should be able to hire illegal workers so as to keep more of its money, then I think I should be able to just walk out of the store with illegal chickens so as to keep more of my money. What do you bet that Tyson would suddenly be in favor of limits on money-saving behavior if a few million of us committed that little crime -- a crime much smaller than hiring illegal labor by the thousands?
“Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
“They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
“And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
“Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
“Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
“And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
“With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
“Thy will be done, Almighty God.
“Amen.
Wow. It's amazing how far we have fallen into the paralysis of political correctness since then. Can you imagine this prayer from a President today? What would today's ACLU have said?
... Those who would quibble with my assertion that all feminists commit murder do so based on the mistaken assumption that a woman must have or actually perform an abortion to commit a murder. That isn’t so.
Charles Manson never actually stabbed or shot any of the five people at the Tate residence. Nor did he stab either of the LaBiancas the following evening. His conviction on all seven counts of murder was due to his choice to enter into a criminal conspiracy with the very people who did, in fact, directly commit the murders.
Whether they have ever had or performed an abortion themselves, all feminists today are voluntarily involved in a movement whose principal issue/goal is abortion on demand. And this meeting of the minds renders the term “baby killer” equal applicable to both the committed and casual feminist alike.
As Prager says, have liberal compassion on the micro/individual level and conservative standards on the macro/societal level.
"We're not saying that variations in solar activity account for all of the global rise in temperature that we are experiencing," Soon said in 1997. "But we believe these variations are the major driving force. Heat-trapping gases emitted by smokestacks and vehicles — the so-called greenhouse effect — appear to be secondary."
The reporter in question being Adam Housley, who’s been covering the protests in Caracas all week, and the apologist being NYC Councilman Charles Barron, whom you’ll remember more recently from his violent threats towards the NYPD and less recently as host to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. Here he gives us a glimpse of what the western left must have sounded like during Stalin’s heyday. Don’t call him a useful idiot. He’s not an idiot; he’s just on the other side.
"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country." - Noah Webster (1790)
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - G. K. Chesterton
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." - George Washington
"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." - Thomas Sowell
"It’s getting close to the point where Osama bin Laden could deliver the keynote speech at the Democrat National Convention." - Rush Limbaugh
"Contemporary politics is all about phony energy, about running around slamming doors for the sake of it—or, more to the point, opening them and tossing through a huge sack of taxpayer dollars." - Mark Steyn
"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." - Alexander Hamilton
"You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies." - Theodore Dalrymple
"It is only the warlike power of a civilized people that can give peace to the world." - Theodore Roosevelt
"If we can’t enforce our laws inside the building where American laws are made, where can we enforce them?" - Tom Tancredo
"Just about every generation has some horrific evil that it must fight. For the Democratic Party today that evil is carbon dioxide emissions. For the rest of us, it is an ideology that teaches that its deity is sanctified by the blood of innocents." - Dennis Prager
"Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all." - Voltaire
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." - Thomas Sowell
"The firm basis of government is justice, not pity." - Woodrow Wilson
"Not everything you may care about is in the Constitution. It is a legal document that had compromises in it. What it says it says; what it doesn’t say it doesn’t say." - Justice Antonin Scalia
"Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents -- but God forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo." - Ann Coulter
"A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future - that community asks for and gets chaos." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Though God alone is competent to judge the heart, we can and must judge whether objective behavior is bad or good, right or wrong." - Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio
"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." - Samuel Adams
"If any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it’s those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood." - Pat Sajak
"The believer in God has to account for the existence of evil and suffering. The atheist has to account for the existence of everything else." - Dennis Prager
"Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid" - Ronald Reagan
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater
"Appreciate the good in your life, and the good will appreciate." - Tal Ben-Shahar
"The dustbin of history is littered with remains of those countries that relied on diplomacy to secure their freedom. We must never forget... in the final analysis... that it is our military, industrial and economic strength that offers the best guarantee of peace for America in times of danger." - Ronald Reagan
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
"But America can still survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope." - Mark Steyn
"Compassion should be applied in the personal (micro) arena, but standards should be applied in the public (macro) arena. Too often compassion is applied in both." - Dennis Prager
"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. " - Thomas Sowell
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill
From the Boston Globe:
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