Saturday, June 27, 2009

"Oceana Was Always At War With Eurasia" of the Day

As reported in Friday's Washington Post:
The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January deadline.
Good.

5 comments:

bobn said...

Totally OT, but you'll appricate this:
EPA May Have Suppressed Report Skeptical Of Global Warming
.


Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data".

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."
.

Skeptical 98 page report here.

It's an optical scan of printed pages, not searchable or copy-pasteable.

I've got a zip file of the pages converted automtically ( and therefore with errors) to text here.

Single txt file here.

Tasty quotes:

"We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries
have paid too little attention to the science of global warming."

"A new 2009 paper finds that the crucial assumption in the GCM models used by the IPCC
concerning strongly positive feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence"

"A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in
dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their research suggests
that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in Earth’s global temperatures.
"

"Global temperatures have declined—extending the current downtrend to ll years with a
particularly rapid decline in 1907-8(sic?); in addition, the PDO went negative in September, 2007 and
the AMO in January, 2009, respectively. At the same time atmospheric CO2 levels have
continued to increase and CO2 emissions have accelerated."

bobn said...

this might be easier to copy and paste from.

suek said...

You know...they keep talking about storing CO2 underground.... I don't understand why. It seems to me that if they think they have to "put" it somewhere, greenhouses with lots and lots of plants would be a better idea. They could have sealed environmentally sealed entrances and have something that would suck off the O2 as it was produced by the plants while they used the CO2...
and produce food at the same time.

Heh. Verification word is gophara...we have _such_ a problem with gophers! Wonder if my theoretical greenhouse would!

bobn said...

Somewhere I was reading referenced an article at one of your more usual sources: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/24/the-epa-suppresses-dissent-and-opinion-and-apparently-decides-issues-in-advance-of-public-comment/

@nooil4pacifists said...

thanks bobn -- I saw that and thought of writing about it, but Anthony Watts (the article you cite) already knocked it out of the park.