This is one of the many convos on SANTA CLARITA COMMUNITY’S Facebook Page about a meeting to “Stop Gun Violence: SCV’s Message to Mitch McConnell”
(ME) Stop gun violence, health insurance for all, free college, etc., etc. All these Utopian ideals are just that. Fiction.
(SANDRA RC) Hey Sean, not fiction as it works in other countries. Are you saying that we’re sub-standard?
(ME)Sandra RC mmm no, it doesn’t work in other countries. There is a myth about Australia. The first being that there are more guns now owned in Australia than before the 1996 massacre (3.2 million vs. 3.6 million).
…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.
For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…
In places like the UK, Jamaica, and the like, violent robbery and home invasions while the occupants are home are VERY high. It is a dangerous place to live in, and many wish they could protect their loved ones.
And of course there is this moving testimony of one of the patrons at Luby’s Massacre:
(STILL ME)Sandra RC — in other words, they [the countries you are thinking of] are sub-standard. Or the purported beliefs about what they have done and accomplished with gun control — those beliefs are sub-standard.
Got that? Gun ban in 1996. The government flat out confiscated weapons. It was mandatory. A gun grab. Now more people than ever have guns. Gun crime has not gone up. Because gun bans totally work…NOT….
Fact: Homicides were falling before the Australian firearm ban. In the seven years before and after the Australian ban, the rate of decline was identical (down to four decimal places). Homicides dropped steeply starting in 2003, but all of this decline was associated with non-firearm and non-knife murders (fewer beatings, poisonings, drownings, etc.). 33
Fact: Crime has been rising since enacting a sweeping ban on private gun ownership. In the first two years after the ban, government statistics showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity. 34In 2001-2002, homicides were up another 20%. 35
From the inception of firearm confiscation to March 27, 2000, the numbers are:
Firearm-related murders were up 19%
Armed robberies were up 69%
Home invasions were up 21%
The sad part is that in the 15 years before the national gun confiscation:
Firearm-related homicides dropped nearly 66%
Firearm-related deaths fell 50%
Fact: Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year. 36
Fact: A ten-year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. 37A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found [no] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” 38and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides. 39 Fact: Despite having much stricter gun control than New Zealand (including a near ban on handguns) firearm homicides in both countries track one another over 25 years, indicating that gun control is not a control variable. 40
MYTH: THE AUSTRALIAN GUN BUYBACK REDUCED MASS HOMICIDES
Mass Homicides in Australia Before/After 1990s Gun Control Initiative
Incidents
Deaths
22-years
Total
Average
Total
Average
Before
0.13
0.08
0.13
0.08
After
0.09
0.10
0.09
0.10
Per 1,000 Population
Fact: The number of mass homicides and the number of people killed in mass homicides in Australia has gone up since the gun control initiatives of the mid 1990s.
(33)Australia Institute of Criminology, AIC NHMP 1989/90 to 2011-12 (34)Crime and Justice – Crimes Recorded by Police, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000 (35)Report #46: Homicide in Australia, 2001-2002, Australian Institute of Criminology, April 2003 (36) Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002 (37) Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?, Dr. Jeanine Baker and Dr. Samara McPhedran, British Journal of Criminology, November 2006. (38) Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 191:562 (39)Australian firearms legislation and unintentional firearm deaths a theoretical explanation for the absence of decline following the 1996 gun laws Public Health, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, Public Health, Volume 122, Issue 3 (40) Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long- Term International Comparisons?, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, and Pooja Singh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, March 16, 2010
The American Spectator has this great information that sets the record clear by giving guidelines to the debate:
Type “mass shootings” and “common” into a search engine and you’ll get all sorts of breathless commentary that might lead one to believe there Americans face a genuine epidemic of shooting rampages. A few headlines:
Vox: “Mass shootings on campus are getting more common and more deadly.”
ThinkProgress: “Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent.”
NPR: “Study: Mass Shootings Are On The Rise Across U.S.”
Washington Post: “Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”
[….]
Homicide in America is far more common than it ought to be. But mass shootings — defined as four or more murders in the same incident — constitute a minuscule share of the total, as I discuss in “The Shooting Cycle” in the most recent edition of the Connecticut Law Review…
I want to break here and post something Mother Jones said in trying to define what a Mass Shooting is… “she” says this:
Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.
Mother Jones then goes on to quote the definition — after being ambiguous about it — as four or more [excluding the shooter]. Wikipedia says this:
The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no “cooling-off period” between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others.
Aggrawal A. (2005) Mass Murder. In: Payne-James JJ, Byard RW, Corey TS, Henderson C (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, Vol. 3, Pp. 216-223. Elsevier Academic Press, London
“Serial Murder – Federal Bureau of Investigation”. Fbi.gov. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
It is odd to me why Mother Jones would be ambiguous about it while at the same time use the accepted FBI terminology/definition. At any rate, I HIGHLY suggest reading this Debunking of Mother Jones’ “10 Pro-Gun Myths,” worth the read.
Obama recently praised Australian gun-control.
ANN COULTER tackles this “Australian Stat” often mentioned. She quotes the New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal as saying this:
Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia’s gun laws, as if it’s a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:
“After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. … Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent … said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.”
…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.
For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…
…This is actually pretty amazing given the threat that the government could actually again try to confiscate guns in the country. That imposes a real potential tax on gun ownership.
A University of Sydney study has shown there has been a steady increase in guns imported into the country over the past decade, with the number of privately owned guns now at the same level as 1996. . . .
Weirdly, gun control advocates are claiming that the buy back is lowering suicides at the same time that they are upset that gun ownership is back to it pre-buy back levels. One doesn’t need a semi-auto to commit suicide. While Australia’s population grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2011, apparently its gun ownership rate grew by 45 percent. If they are right, the pattern should have been clear: suicides with guns should have plunged in 1997 and then quickly grown after that. Obviously that pattern wasn’t what was observed….
Crime is dropping recently in Australia, but this can be attributed to gun ownership rising back up to the previous rates before the ban. GAY PATRIOTcomments on the before mentioned Obama quote about Australia:
I reiterate the two hidden rules of “Common Sense Gun Laws:”
1. “We only want to keep guns away from dangerous persons.”
2. “Anyone who owns a gun is a dangerous person.”
NATIONAL REVIEW also makes the point that in order to praise Australian “success,” one is praising anti-Constitutional actions:
Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. When the Left says that we should respond to shootings as Australia did, they don’t mean that we should institute background checks on private sales; they mean that they we should ban and confiscate guns. No amount of wooly words can change this. Again, one doesn’t bring up countries that have confiscated firearms as a shining example unless one wishes to push the conversation toward confiscation.
[….]
Obama gave the impression that gun-violence is on the increase. This is false. As both Pew and the Department of Justice recorded last year, the majority of Americans believe that gun violence is proliferating when it is in fact dropping. This year marked a 20-year low. More than anything, America has a copycat problem in its schools.
…The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that from 2002-2011, 95 percent of total homicide incidents involved a single fatality, 4 percent involved two victims, 0.6 percent involved 3 victims, and only .02 percent involved four or more victims. Another study performed between 1976 and 2005 yields similar results — that less than one-fifth of 1 percent all murders in the United States involved four or more victims. In other words, the bottom line is that out of every 10,000 incidents of homicide, roughly two are mass killings.
Further, contrary to what the zeitgeist may suggest, mass shootings are not on the rise. Prominent criminologist James Alan Fox has found “no upward trend in mass killings” since the ’70s. Take campus statistics as an example: “Overall in this country, there is an average of 10 to 20 murders across campuses in any given year,” Fox told CNN (and roughly 99 percent of these reported homicides were not mass shootings). “Compare that to over 1,000 suicides and about 1,500 deaths from binge drinking and drug overdoses.” Mass shootings on college campuses lag far, far behind many much more prevalent social and mental health problems.
The rare nature of these incidents also holds true for safety in K-12 schools, which garnered a significant amount of attention in the wake of the tragedies in Columbine and Newtown. According to two reports by the Centers for Disease Control, the probability of a child “dying in school in any given year from homicide or suicide was less than one in 1 million between 1992 and 1994 and slightly greater than one in 2 million between 1994 and 1999.”
Of course any story like the above needs a positive one added to it. The Blaze has this:
Two armed criminals reportedly put a gun to a 17-year-old girl’s head on Monday night as she was outside retrieving something from a car. The man, whose intentions still aren’t entirely clear, then ordered the teenager to take them into her house — a decision that would prove to have deadly consequences.
Peering out the window of the St. Louis home were the girl’s mother and father, each prepared to protect their daughter with deadly force. There was also a 5-year-old boy in the house, though his relationship to the family wasn’t known on Tuesday.
The girl’s father, a 34-year-old man, reportedly observed the men walking towards his home while holding a gun to his daughter’s head, a sight that no father ever wants to see. He quickly retrieved his firearm and his wife did the same.
The brave dad then confronted the two criminals and opened fire, hitting both suspects with accurate shots…
…The majority of the mainstream media have for months predicted either a Labor landslide, or a comfortable Labor win, with only a handful of pundits brave enough to suggest that the Liberals could or might win – but I repeatedly and consistently said on Sky News for the last six months that the Liberals would win and I never deviated from that prediction. None of the polls or prominent experts picked it, although of course writers at The Spectator Australia such as David Flint and John Ruddick most certainly did.
[….]
…Laughably, a veritable army of commentators, pundits, doyens of the ABC on massive taxpayer-funded salaries and other red-faced experts spent election night blithering and blathering that nobody foresaw this result. Which is nonsense. We did.
The more important question is why those of us at this magazine and on this website who foresaw the result were correct.
For my part, quite possibly the fact that I am one of Australia’s more open global warming sceptics gives me an insight into how normal, real people – away from the latte-sipping, wealthy SUV-driving trendy inner-city types – actually think. This was indeed an election dominated by climate change. Labor put forward the most radical left-wing climate polices at the very time when, in various places around the world, voters who have lived with these policies are rejecting them. Common sense Australians have now rejected them too, recognising that climate change policies would financially damage them severely whilst achieving no change whatsoever to the planet’s temperatures, as was admitted by Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. Australians have woken up to the fact that climate change is simply socialism in drag.
This was the climate change election, and climate change lost. This was the socialism versus capitalism election, and socialism lost. This was the identity politics versus traditional values election, and identity politics lost. This was the political correctness versus common sense election, and political correctness lost. This was the luvvies versus the tradies and small business people election, and the luvvies lost.
Take note those of you in the virtue-signalling business world who sneer at people because of their religious beliefs, their love of Australia, their traditional family and conservative values. If you pander to the Left and allow your business to be hostage to left wing activism, you lose. You lose market share. You lose profit. You lose customers. And now, as we have seen you lose votes….
The Jim Jefferies Show is a late-night talk show hosted on Comedy Central by the titular Australian comedian Jim Jefferies. On March 19th, during the season premiere of The Jim Jefferies Show, Jefferies turned his attentions towards the recent Christchurch Terror Attacks in New Zealand. In his segment, Jefferies featured clips of anti-immigrant activists discussing their beliefs and interviewed Jewish activist Avi Yemini, who appears in the segment to support blanket racial discrimination when it comes to immigration:
Avi Yemini discusses with Steven Crowder how the Jim Jefferies Show deceptively edited his interview to push their false narrative to paint him as an Islamaphobe, and the aftermath of his revelation… (Avi’s video can be found HERE):
Walt Heyer is a man I greatly respect. He has “cameos” throughout and wrote an excellent book, PAPER GENDERS (see more). He is also featured on my “TRANSGENDER PAGE.” Professor Peterson is also a champion for free speech. A good interview. Keep in mind that this YouTube channel added to the interview regarding the extreme nature of this movement’s hubris that they control even gender. (h-t- to my mom) The interview was done by John D. Anderson, who served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Leader of the rural-based National Party of Australia from July 1999 to July 2005.
FOX NEWS has a story to catch the listener up on the issue, and one must take not that I stuffed the CNN bit in-between Prager’s commentary.
NEWSBUSTERS discusses the upcoming D.C. policy regarding gender and I.D.
If you like your pronouns, you can keep your pronouns.
Well, you could. But not any longer. Now, you must use whatever pronoun somebody else wants. We are now all supposed to guess who might want to be thought of as another gender. Or, act like idiots and ask gender pronouns of everyone we meet.
Perhaps we need a database, readily accessible from our phones, that lists all the new gender possibilities (a large database) and then you can run down the list every time you meet someone new. “Hello, possibly human person, do you consider yourself a he, she, it, ze, zir, they or some other made up word to express your inner issues?”
Gosh, I wish I was joking. But new pronouns are all the rage. D.C. (which stands for District of Columbia, not the opposite of AC) is now issuing genderless driver’s licenses. CNN reported June 28: “They would become the first people in the United States to choose X as their gender marker instead of male or female on driver’s licenses and identification cards.” X, as we all learned in movies, marks the spot. In this case, the spot that is the most gender insane in the U.S.
Lefty media love this craziness. “On May 31, AP released its 2017 Stylebook. The new Stylebook contains changes on the language used around gender, LGBTQ people and ‘they,’ as a ‘singular, gender-neutral pronoun,’” wrote the Washington Blade.
Citylab gave readers “A Guide to Using Gender-Neutral Pronouns” way back in 2015. “Rule No. 1: Don’t assume you know someone’s gender just by looking at them,” readers were told.
For timeliness, there’s an 8-month-old Canadian baby that has no official gender. Let’s look at the loons from Jezebel to explain how insane this is: “The baby, named Searyl Atli Doty, was born in November in a house rather than a hospital and did not have a medical official inspect their genitals to determine their biological gender. One of the baby’s parents, Kori Doty, a non-binary trans person, wants Searyl to discover their own gender—and not having a specific gender on any of the baby’s records is integral to that discovery.”
“Discover their own gender.” Boy, that’s going to be one well-adjusted kid later in life.
And now, the lefty women’s site Refinery 29 explained, “THE EASIEST WAY TO KNOW IF SOMEONE PREFERS TO BE CALLED ‘HE,’ ‘SHE,’ OR ‘THEY.’” That’ was part of the video feature, “TRANS 102.”
The video is important to watch because governments in New York and Canada are working on making mis-gendering someone a crime. Yep, lefty governments are that demented. And the alt-left can’t even agree on how many genders there are — New York’s 31 or Facebook’s 58? Or some other number bigger than a bread box…..
Dennis Prager reads from GATESTONE’S article, entitled: “Australia: The Madness Continues.” The whole hour was on the West’s suicide, but this section is for all my fellow patriots to the Western ideals down-under. We are at war with trying to conserve simple common sense designations.
Yesterday’s show and his column today via Dennis Prager, deals with CNN reporter, Jill Filipovic, writing about Australian Sen. Larissa Waters. Miss. Waters does not cover her breast while the baby eats… a polite manner/habit when breastfeeding in public. The part I was especially interested in was the portion quoting evolutionary psychologist Carol Jahme, a science columnist for the left-wing pro-feminist publication the Guardian….
….Because in virtually every society, heterosexual men have found the female breast a particularly sexually alluring part of a woman’s body.
Evolutionary psychologist Carol Jahme, a science columnist for the left-wing pro-feminist publication the Guardian, summarized a whole host of academic studies. She wrote: “The full, plump bosom seen in the human ape is an anomaly. No other primate has a permanent breast. … The sex appeal of rounded female buttocks and plump breasts is both universal and unique to the human primate.”
So, then, the sole purpose of women’s breasts is not for nursing babies. It is also to attract and arouse men.
Yet, whoever argues that women’s breasts are there to arouse men, not just to provide a baby with milk, is dismissed by feminists as a sexist heterosexist patriarchal pig, a product of a sexist culture that renders women and their baby-feeding mammary glands sexual objects.
But it turns out that science, not just common sense, rejects the feminist argument.
So, how does a CNN columnist, along with myriad other feminists, not know this? Why did my grandmother, who never went to high school, know this, while a vast number of graduates of our universities do not?
The answer is that today’s universities — especially women’s studies and gender studies departments — generally make people stupid.
The only remaining question is: Did anyone at CNN find this column absurd? I suspect not….
Keep in mind, I do not believe in naturalistic evolution, but this is an argument you would adopt to show the detractor that even their side argues against them.
“We are experiencing a state-wide outage which means we have no supply from the upstream transmission network,” electricity distributor SA Power Networks told clients late Wednesday.
In an unprecedented development, the state was cut-off from the national electricity network, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said “resulting in a state-wide power outage in South Australia”. As a result, the entire electricity market in the state had been suspended as it sought to work with electricity transmission company ElectraNet “to identify and understand the severity of the fault, as well as determine a power restoration time”.
[….]
The extensive disruption follows the narrow avoidance of widespread blackouts in South Australia in July. At that time, the state government brought pressure to bear on a local power company for an idled power station to be restarted to avoid potential disruptions, following a lack of electricity generated from wind and solar sources at a time when it was unable to “import” sufficient supply from Victoria.
But Wednesday’s event will trigger renewed debate over the state’s heavy reliance on renewable energy which has forced the closure of uncompetitive power stations, putting the electricity network in South Australia under stress.
[….]
These issues are different to those South Australia is battling at the moment. But the increasing complexity of electricity networks, which are dealing with a more diverse location of power generators such as wind farms in remote locations rather than a small number of big power stations, means that at times of stress such as extreme storms which occurred in the state on Wednesday, outages can take longer to resolve .
South Australia relies more heavily on renewable power than any other region in the developed world. This has put it at the forefront of confronting, and resolving, the issues involved — as Wednesday’s storm has served to remind its residents.
This is an importation and addition to some older posts from my old blog. One should see this recent post as well to get an idea of this “religious” aspect of the left.
If the following people are rightfully derided for false prophesies, which eventually caused even Harold Camping to say he was wrong, what about this? In other words, if one derides Bush for “lying his way into war,” or that, “the Bible is false because of failed prophecies or contradictions,” then why doesn’t this same thinking apply to this pet theory?
...False Prophecy
“…the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012″
Here is a top-ten list from The Herald Sun (an Australian paper) from 2008:
1. OUR CITIES WILL DIE OF THIRST
TIM Flannery, an expert in bones, has made a fortune from books and lectures warning that we face global warming doom. He scared us so well that we last year made him Australian of the Year. In March, Flannery said: “The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.” In fact, Adelaide’s reservoirs are now 75 per cent full, just weeks from 2009.
In June last year, Flannery warned Brisbane’s “water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months”. In fact, 18 months later, its dams are 46 per cent full after Brisbane’s wettest spring in 27 years.
In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney’s dams could be dry in just two years. In fact, three years later its dams are 63 per cent full, not least because June last year was its wettest since 1951.
In 2004, Flannery said global warming would cause such droughts that “there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis”. In fact, Perth now has the lowest water restrictions of any state capital, thanks to its desalination plant and dams that are 40 per cent full after the city’s wettest November in 17 years.
2. OUR REEF WILL DIE
PROFESSOR Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of Queensland University, is Australia’s most quoted reef expert. He’s advised business, green and government groups, and won our rich Eureka Prize for scares about the Great Barrier Reef. He’s chaired a $20 million global warming study of the World Bank.
In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white. In fact, he later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery.
In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s great Barrier Reef could die within a month”. In fact, he later admitted this bleaching had “a minimal impact”.
In 2007, he warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were again bleaching the reef. In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report, and veteran diver Ben Cropp said this week that in 50 years he’d seen none at all.
3. GOODBYE, NORTH POLE
IN April this year, the papers were full of warnings the Arctic ice could all melt. “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time,” claimed Dr David Barber, of Manitoba University, ignoring the many earlier times the Pole has been ice free. “It’s hard to see how the system may bounce back (this year),” fretted Dr Ignatius Rigor, of Washington University’s polar science centre.
Tim Flannery also warned “this may be the Arctic’s first ice-free year”, and the ABC and Age got reporter Marian Wilkinson to go stare at the ice and wail: “Here you can see climate change happening before your eyes.” In fact, the Arctic’s ice cover this year was almost 10 per cent above last year’s great low, and has refrozen rapidly since. Meanwhile, sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing. Been told either cool fact? Yet Barber is again in the news this month, predicting an ice-free Arctic now in six years. Did anyone ask him how he got his last prediction wrong?
4. BEWARE HUGE WINDS
AL Gore sold his scary global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth, shown in almost every school in the country, with a poster of a terrible hurricane. Former US president Bill Clinton later gloated: “It is now generally recognised that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming. . . It’s going to lead to more hurricanes.” In fact, there is still no proof of a link between any warming and hurricanes. Australia is actually getting fewer cyclones, and last month researchers at Florida State University concluded that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years.
5. GIANT HAILSTONES WILL SMASH THROUGH YOUR ROOF
ROSS Garnaut, a professor of economics, is the guru behind the Rudd Government’s global warming policies. He this year defended the ugly curved steel roof he’d planned at the rear of his city property, telling angry locals he was protecting himself from climate change: “Severe and more frequent hailstones will be a feature of this change,” he said. In fact, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits “decreases in hail frequency are simulated for Melbourne. . .”
6. NO MORE SKIING
A BAD ski season three years ago – right after a great one – had The Age and other alarmists blaming global warming. The CSIRO, once our top science body, fanned the fear by claiming resorts such as Mt Hotham and Mt Buller could lose a quarter of their snow by 2020. In fact, this year was another boom one for skiing, with Mt Hotham and Mt Buller covered in snow five weeks before the season started.
What’s more, a study this year in the Hydrological Sciences Journal checked six climate models, including one used by the CSIRO. It found they couldn’t even predict the regional climate we’d had already: “Local model projections cannot be credible . . .” It also confirmed the finding of a study last year in the International Journal of Climatology that the 22 most cited global warming models could not “accurately explain the (global) climate from the recent past”. As for predicting the future. . .
7. PERTH WILL BAKE DRY
THE CSIRO last year claimed Perth was “particularly vulnerable” and had a 90 per cent chance of getting less rain and higher temperatures. “There are not many other parts of the world where the IPCC has made a prediction that a drop in rainfall is highly likely,” it said. In fact, Perth has just had its coldest and wettest November since 1991.
8.ISLANDS WILL DROWN
THE seas will rise up to 100m by 2100, claims ABC Science Show host Robyn Williams. Six metres, suggests Al Gore. So let’s take in “climate refugees” from low-lying Tuvalu, says federal Labor. And ban coastal development, says the Brumby Government. In fact, while the seas have slowly risen since the last ice age, before man got gassy, they’ve stopped rising for the last two, according to data from the Jason-1 satellite. “There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rises,” the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute declared last month.
9. BRITAIN WILL SWELTER
The British Met Office is home to the Hadley Centre, one of the top centres of the man-made global warming faith. In April it predicted: “The coming summer is expected to be a ‘typical British summer’. . .” In fact, in August it admitted: “(This) summer . . . has been one of the wettest on record across the UK.”
In September it predicted: “The coming winter (is) likely to be milder than average.” In fact, winter has been so cold that London had its first October snow in 74 years—and on the very day Parliament voted to fight “global warming”.
Here is a recent two month list of new information turning over past — false — prophecies about global destruction:
Climate Modeling Failure: New Study Finds EPA & IPCC Climate Models Wrong About More Droughts For Southwest USA: The EPA, the IPCC and the USGCRP bureaucrats have erroneously predicted, per their global climate models, that southwest U.S. would become drier with more droughts – the latest research finds that these predictions are result of climate modeling failure
Global Sea Level Rise: Melting Glaciers Have Tiny Impact On Sea Levels – Maybe 3.7 Inches By 2100: Alarmists have long predicted that Greenland’s melting glaciers were causing an “accelerating” global sea level rise – new study confirms global warming alarmists wrong
Tide Gauge Station Data Analysis: NZ Scientists Confirm Sea Level Rise Is Modest – 7 Inches By 2100: current global sea level rise is barely noticable, which is complete contradiction of IPCC predictions over past 2 decades
Runaway Greenhouse Effect Facts: NASA’s “Boiling Oceans” Prediction Not Supported By Data – Is Hansen Crazy? Runaway greenhouse effect facts (or lack thereof) – while James Lovelock recently admits to hyping global warming alarmism, James Hansen still does crazy fearmongering – on video he predicts boiling oceans
Impact of Climate Change: Health Research Determines Global Warming Does Not Cause Illnesses: The IPCC climate impact models predicted increases in many illnesses that would lessen the quality of life – new study confirms the IPCC “scientists” beliefs in computer simulations were misplaced
Climate Change Effects: Agriculture Research Debunks IPCC Myth That Global Warming & CO2 Harm Crops: The latest agriculture research on climate change effects clearly prove that IPCC climate model predictions of looming crop failures are bogus – wheat study result opposite of IPCC fabricated myth
Tide Gauge Station Data Analysis: EU Scientists Confirm Sea Level Rise Not Unusual – IPCC Prediction Wrong: IPCC predicted accelerating sea level rises due to human CO2 emissions – real scientists examine the tide gauge station empirical evidence and find recent sea level increases not unusual
Extreme Climate Change Risk: Scientists Find Himalaya Severe Rainfall Evidence ‘Baffling’: Researchers analyzing data for extreme climate change risk continue to discover evidence that the predicted results are not happening – lack of extreme rainfall in the Himalayas is most recent example
Climate Modeling Failure: IPCC Models Unable Predict The Major ‘Siberian High’ Climatic Condition: Climate modeling failure remains a major embarrassment for the UN’s IPPC’s “climate science” efforts – this time their models failed at predicting the ‘Siberian Highs’ that dominate Northern Hemisphere weather
Climate Modeling: Failure of IPCC’s Newest Climate Models – ‘Still Worthless After All These Years’: Climate modeling failure by the IPCC’s past climate models is huge and well documented – the newest climate models are no better
Is Global Warming Happening? IPCC Climate Models Predicted Huge Warming But Reality Happened Instead: For years the public wondered “Is global warming happening?” as the IPCC climate models predicted – instead the HadCRUT temperature dataset clearly shows global temps cooling off
The Global Warming Permafrost Tipping Point: Scientists Discover Permafrost Thawing Not Happening: The IPCC scientists and global warming alarmists predicted that increasing CO2 emissions would lead to a catastrophic permafrost tipping point, unleashing gigatons of methane gas – they were wrong.
Dennis Prager makes mention that global warming has become more of a religion to the secular left in search for something bigger than them. Vic Boccard concurs when he said, “Now, global warming has not only become the mantra of the left, it has become almost a religion of this ilk — a large, end-of-the-world cult.” One author makes passing mention of this comparing it to the eschatologies found in Judaism and Christianity.
….The term eschatology refers to that sub-field of theology devoted to the discussion (logos) of the last things (eschatos). It was located within the field of theology because of the assumption that the “last things” would represent God’s ultimate intervention in history. Today, we talk of secular eschatologies–Marxism, for example–and scientific eschatologies.
Some would argue that Marxist eschatology is part of what makes Marxism a religion. So, perhaps, the term “secular eschatology” is an oxymoron after all.
But, why the impulse to discuss the last things? Why are we curious as to what will happen at the end of time, or “after” the end of time, as if it is even possible to think of an “after” to the end of time? Why does all of this preoccupy us?….
eschatology has been part of my theological agenda since I began to reflect on theology, some fifty years ago. I recently came upon the essays I wrote for admission to Rabbinical School back in the spring of 1954. To my amazement—I was then a rank undergraduate at McGill University—they were suffused with the issue of messianism. When I arrived at the Jewish Theological Seminary, one of my mentors, Professor Gerson Cohen later to become Chancellor of the Seminary, made an off–hand remark to the effect that every significant Jewish movement had an eschatological impulse at its core….
Equally puzzling to me is why Christian theologians are so preoccupied with eschatology. Why is it everywhere in contemporary Christian theology and so strikingly absent from the writings of 20th century Jewish thinkers? Still more puzzling to me, is why our cosmologists and astronomers are so preoccupied with the question of how it all will end…. (SOURCE)
We all know of “end-time stories in religion… in fact I have a pet theory herein that is based in classic religious eschatology. Famines, weather, wars, pestilence all are found in the Bible. Not only in the Bible though, but also in secular ideology in regards to Global Warming. For instance, some “end-time statements by secularists.
What changed in the United States with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences. ~ Al Gore
All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster. ~ Barack Obama
Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it. ~ TONY BLAIR
People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes. ~ ELIZABETH KOLBERT
The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we’re contributing to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe. ~ Barack Obama
We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late 80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a “slowmotion catastrophe” one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly. ~ David Suzuki
[icon name=”bullhorn” class=””]…See more at end AND HERE
Regional Catastrophe moderate-case global warming Global civilization not eliminated, but regional civilizations effectively destroyed; millions to hundreds of millions dead, but large parts of humankind retain current social and technological conditions. Chance of humankind recovery: excellent. Species local to the catastrophe likely die off, and post-catastrophe effects (refugees, fallout, etc.) may kill more. Chance of biosphere recovery: excellent.
Human Die-Back extreme-case global warming Global civilization set back to pre- or low-industrial conditions; several billion or more dead, but human species as a whole survives, in pockets of varying technological and social conditions. Chance of humankind recovery: moderate. Most non-human species on brink of extinction die off, but most other plant and animal species remain and, eventually, flourish. Chance of biosphere recovery: excellent.
Civilization Extinction worst-case global warming Global civilization destroyed; millions (at most) remain alive, in isolated locations, with ongoing death rate likely exceeding birth rate. Chance of humankind recovery: slim. Many non-human species die off, but some remain and, over time, begin to expand and diverge. Chance of biosphere recovery: good.
This theory about anthropogenic global warming is nothing more than humanity reaching out to their own pet theories in a false belief that they are [the pet theories] actually bigger than they are [themselves]. Pascal once said that people try to fill that God shaped vacuum. I agree.
The left has its “end of the world” type of theology, or rightly called, eschatology. I have dealt with this before, it will be added at the end, however, this “Swine Flu” example is fitting. Listen to Joe Biden and his “mania” about something which we are being told today by experts is nothing but a regular flew season (in fact, even less deadly than normal seasons of the flu):
What did Joe do a couple of days after this interview? He hopped on a train to go home after his work day (costing us tax-payers another $250). This seems to be a theme in Washington… and as of late, this has been a problem on both sides of the isle — although still much more prominent on the left. That is, expecting the public to fall in line with mandates, and the mandaters living above what they expect the general public to do. this is elitist. So while Gore goes around the country and world telling people how to live a life which he himself doesn’t. A prime example of this is summed up in the cartoon below:
Do you understand? People are traveling around the world saying New York and Florida are going to be under water and it is now too late to do anything about it! Another figure is saying do not take public or private transportation or even put your kids in school. What Christian with influence like the current Vice President or past Vice President is traveling the world or getting on CNN and calling for drastic measure or preaching that the world will end because of man’s actions?
Christians do not even thing in the worst portion of Armageddon that the world will end. Postmillennialist, amillenialist, or premillinialist Christians preach a time of a thousand year reign of Christ after He (not us) sets things right. Democrats are saying “let US set things straight” in order for the world not to end. This secular proposition by the left has come to fruition in 166 to 244-million people being murdered by utopians just in the 20th century alone (more than the entire history of all deaths by religions since recorded history). Doesn’t that frighten you a bit, that politicians say in order to stop the world from coming to an end you must vote for their legislation pumped down the tubes by organizations that the co-founder of Green Peace say are:
“I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology…. many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not.” (See More)
I don’t want that pill thank you very much. Yet here we are: Cap n’ Trade, Swine Flu, Global Warming, etc. Pills being pushed down the throats of the common man. This common man may wake up with a Biden in his and her living room one day controlling even your thermostat! The “Right” isn’t telling people of same-sexes not to be a couple. In fact, here in California they have the exact same right in Civil Unions that my wife and I have: hospital visits, tax breaks, health-care options from employers, and the like. But that is not what the whole thing is about. However, they will tell us that they don’t want the government telling them how to live… except about how much water to flush in their toilet, how much water can come out of their shower head, what type of light bulb to use in the privacy of one’s home, or now even how low or high to set a thermostat. That isn’t government intrusion… no… that is liberals trying to save the planet for their utopian dreams — that will never come to fruition, mainly due to the Left’s view of man and his nature (the below is from a larger paper I wrote in a response to friend who was going to San Francisco University of California):
In many cases, “modern liberal” positions are based on the idea of tolerance, the freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases. This in turn is based on moral relativism, the idea that morality is relative to the individual and the situation (which distinguishes it from “classical liberalism”). Again, what is right or wrong for you may not be right or wrong for others. As a result, you cannot tell others not to have an abortion, not to look at or publish pornography, or not to live by an “alternative lifestyle.” Educational environments must be “value free,” there must be no restrictions on sexual and artistic freedom, and according to some, even activities such as recreational drug use should be decriminalized. Because there are no absolute values, each person must discover his own morality, a process taught in our schools as “values clarification.”
The liberal contradiction lies in the fact that every liberal position claims to be morally correct and objectively true. It is right to allow abortions and wrong to oppose them. Tolerance (in its modern definition) is good, intolerance is bad. Children should be allowed to grow up in a value-free environment; parents should not impose their own values. Modern liberalism takes a moral stance on every issue, but it undermines its own foundation by claiming that there is no moral absolute or guide to adhere to.
To put it into simple terms, yet once more, when a liberal tells you that you cannot tell other people what to do, he or she is contradicting himself by telling you what to do! And there is another side to the liberal contradiction. While many liberal positions are based on tolerance and complete individual freedom, other liberal positions are based on strict authoritarianism.
According to contemporary liberalism, the common good (what Rousseau called “the general will”) necessitates the suppression of individual rights when it comes to “saving” the environment, creating a more “equitable distribution” of wealth, achieving “equality” between races and sexes in all walks of life, and enforcing a strict separation of church and state. Paradoxically, that same “common good” takes a back seat to individual freedoms when it comes to the detrimental effects of: pornography and sexual freedom, reduced police power and criminal punishment, or drug use, or firearm mandates, etc..
Let me hasten to add that I too am for tolerance, equal rights, and ending unjust discrimination. I too am for freedom of speech, artistic freedom, academic freedom, and the separation of church and state. I too am for protecting the environment and helping the underprivileged. But I am for these things because I believe in the tenants of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, not because I reject these absolutes.
If I were to reject the idea of moral truths, what possible motivation (moral duty) could I have to champion these or any other causes? More important, on what basis could I hope to persuade others of the importance of these causes? It is inconsistent to claim to be concerned about rights while rejecting the moral foundation from which rights are derived.
The rejection of one’s own moral foundation leads one to be not only immoral, but also illogical. It leads to positions that are inconsistent with themselves and each other (self-deleting). It leads to outcomes that directly counter one’s original intention and that threaten one’s own goals. It is unfortunate for the liberal agenda, but the liberal contradiction poses just such a threat. And it is not a threat from “conservatives” or from any outside source – it is a threat from within. Because of the rejection of the moral foundation for liberalism, liberalism is failing to protect the rights it claims to cherish. “What is is?” Please Mr. President!
(Chapter three of Dale Berryhill’s book, The Liberal Contradiction, entitled “Who Decides? The Doctrine of Tolerance,” pp. 43-48.)
All these scares are plenty, and almost all from the left. Dennis Prager reads from a Wall Street Journal article about the religion of Climatism::
[icon name=”bullhorn” class=””] UNLESS, that is, the masses believe more-and-more that climate skepticism is truly evil, as David Suzuki believes, jail will soon await:
Richard Tol, Leslie Woodcock, James Lovelock, and others all feel the sting of the machinethey were a part of. A part of because these and other men-and-women specialists have abandoned what they previously supported as being true. But this machine they helped build has a way of growing too large to fail. And it is biting them in the ass!
This comes way of WUWT, and highlights the tendency of the Left towards totalitarian thinking in order to make their vision “work.
Scientists who don’t believe in catastrophic man-made global warming should be put in prison, a US philosophy professor argues on a website funded by the UK government.
Lawrence Torcello – assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”. (H/T Bishop Hill):
What are we to make of those behind the well documented corporate funding of global warming denial? Those who purposefully strive to make sure “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” is given to the public? I believe we understand them correctly when we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life. It is time for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems accordingly.
What next, numbers tattooed on our arms because we hold an opinion different from Torcello?
REASON.ORG ends with a great commentary on this freedom restricting idea of the above lunatic:
In 2012, in a proceeding straight out of the Inquisition, an Italian court convicted six scientists for providing “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” in the lead-up to the earthquake. Now, a philosophy professor says that case may provide a worthwhile example for the treatment of scientific dissenters—specifically, “climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.”…
…He ultimately allows that he wouldn’t actually criminalize poor scientific communication—just anybody who might support dissenting scientists, or receive such support.
If those with a financial or political interest in inaction had funded an organised campaign to discredit the consensus findings of seismology, and for that reason no preparations were made, then many of us would agree that the financiers of the denialist campaign were criminally responsible for the consequences of that campaign. I submit that this is just what is happening with the current, well documented funding of global warming denialism….
We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.
If you’re trying to figure out how that doesn’t threaten the free exercise of speech, Torcello assures us, “We must make the critical distinction between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs, and the funding of a strategically organized campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions.”
So…You can voice a dissenting opinion, so long as you don’t benefit from it or help dissenters benefit in any way?
By the way, according to RIT, Torcello researches “the moral implications of global warming denialism, as well as other forms of science denialism.” Presumably, his job is a paid one. But this is OK, because…the majority of scientists agree with his views on the issue?
Let’s allow that they do—and that a majority of scientists agree about man-made climate change and a host of other issues. Just when does the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition meet to decide what is still subject to debate, and what is now holy writ? And is an effort to “undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus” always criminally negligent?…
“‘The trouble with almost all environmental problems,’ says Paul R. Ehrlich, the population biologist, ‘is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. … We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.’” —The New York Times, 1969.
“No real action has been taken to save the environment, [Ehrlich] maintains. And it does need saving. Ehrlich predicts that the oceans will be as dead as Lake Erie in less than a decade.” —Redlands Daily Facts, 1970.
“Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21st Century: Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century. … If the current rate of increase in electric power generation continues, the demands for cooling water will boil dry the entire flow of the rivers and streams of continental United States. … By the next century ‘the consumption of oxygen in combustion processes, world-wide, will surpass all of the processes which return oxygen to the atmosphere.’” —The Boston Globe, 1970.
“The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. … ‘In the next 50 years,’ the fine dust man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees. If sustained ‘over several years’—‘five to 10,’ he estimated—‘such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!’” —Washington Post, Times Herald, 1971.
“Dear Mr. President: … We feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. … The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. … The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century.” —Brown University, Department of Geological Sciences, 1972.
“However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing.” – Time Magazine, 1974.
“Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. Telltale signs are everywhere—from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 [degrees] F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.” —Time magazine, 1974.
“A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” —Associated Press, 1989.
“Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.” —former Vice President Al Gore, 2006.
“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 2019.
Gateway Pundit has two stories that really should be one. The first is of the Australian government cutting back 90% of the funding related to global warming from their annual budget.
Australia’s conservative coalition is set to cut more than 90 percent of the funding related to global warming from their budget, from $5.75 billion this year to $500 million, over the next four years.
Environmentalists and leftist politicians in the country protested the move by conservative Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s governing coalition to slash funding for climate programs, arguing such funding for green energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions were necessary to stop global warming….
And the other old story that is more than worth repeating is this (via Gateway):
Over five years ago Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. Gore made the prediction to a German audience in 2008. He told them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”
Not only is the North Polar cap not melted away – global warming is not happening either. There has been no global warming in 17 years and 9 months [graph at top].
This flat-line comes at a time of a drastic increase in CO2:
Climate scientist Dr. Murry Salby, Professor and Climate Chair at Macquarie University, Australia explains in a recent, highly-recommended lecture presented at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany, why man-made CO2 is not the driver of atmospheric CO2 or climate change.
Dr. Salby demonstrates:
CO2 lags temperature on both short [~1-2 year] and long [~1000 year] time scales
The IPCC claim that “All of the increases [in CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times] are caused by human activity” is impossible
“Man-made emissions of CO2 are clearly not the source of atmospheric CO2 levels”
Satellite observations show the highest levels of CO2 are present over non-industrialized regions, e.g. the Amazon, not over industrialized regions
96% of CO2 emissions are from natural sources, only 4% is man-made
Net global emissions from all sources correlate almost perfectly with short-term temperature changes [R2=.93] rather than man-made emissions
Methane levels are also controlled by temperature, not man-made emissions
Climate model predictions track only a single independent variable – CO2 – and disregard all the other, much more important independent variables including clouds and water vapor.
The 1% of the global energy budget controlled by CO2 cannot wag the other 99%
Climate models have been falsified by observations over the past 15+ years
Climate models have no predictive value
Feynman’s quote “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with the data, it’s wrong” applies to the theory of man-made global warming.
The American Spectator has this great information that sets the record clear by giving guidelines to the debate:
Type “mass shootings” and “common” into a search engine and you’ll get all sorts of breathless commentary that might lead one to believe there Americans face a genuine epidemic of shooting rampages. A few headlines:
Vox: “Mass shootings on campus are getting more common and more deadly.”
ThinkProgress: “Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent.”
NPR: “Study: Mass Shootings Are On The Rise Across U.S.”
Washington Post: “Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”
[….]
Homicide in America is far more common than it ought to be. But mass shootings — defined as four or more murders in the same incident — constitute a minuscule share of the total, as I discuss in “The Shooting Cycle” in the most recent edition of the Connecticut Law Review…
I want to break here and post something Mother Jones said in trying to define what a Mass Shooting is… “she” says this:
Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.
Mother Jones then goes on to quote the definition — after being ambiguous about it — as four or more [excluding the shooter]. Wikipedia says this:
The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no “cooling-off period” between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others.
Aggrawal A. (2005) Mass Murder. In: Payne-James JJ, Byard RW, Corey TS, Henderson C (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, Vol. 3, Pp. 216-223. Elsevier Academic Press, London
“Serial Murder – Federal Bureau of Investigation”. Fbi.gov. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
It is odd to me why Mother Jones would be ambiguous about it while at the same time use the accepted FBI terminology/definition. At any rate, I HIGHLY suggest reading this Debunking of Mother Jones’ “10 Pro-Gun Myths,” worth the read.
Obama recently praised Australian gun-control.
ANN COULTER tackles this “Australian Stat” often mentioned. She quotes the New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal as saying this:
Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia’s gun laws, as if it’s a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:
“After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. … Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent … said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.”
…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.
For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…
…This is actually pretty amazing given the threat that the government could actually again try to confiscate guns in the country. That imposes a real potential tax on gun ownership.
A University of Sydney study has shown there has been a steady increase in guns imported into the country over the past decade, with the number of privately owned guns now at the same level as 1996. . . .
Weirdly, gun control advocates are claiming that the buy back is lowering suicides at the same time that they are upset that gun ownership is back to it pre-buy back levels. One doesn’t need a semi-auto to commit suicide. While Australia’s population grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2011, apparently its gun ownership rate grew by 45 percent. If they are right, the pattern should have been clear: suicides with guns should have plunged in 1997 and then quickly grown after that. Obviously that pattern wasn’t what was observed….
Crime is dropping recently in Australia, but this can be attributed to gun ownership rising back up to the previous rates before the ban. GAY PATRIOTcomments on the before mentioned Obama quote about Australia:
I reiterate the two hidden rules of “Common Sense Gun Laws:”
1. “We only want to keep guns away from dangerous persons.”
2. “Anyone who owns a gun is a dangerous person.”
NATIONAL REVIEW also makes the point that in order to praise Australian “success,” one is praising anti-Constitutional actions:
Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. When the Left says that we should respond to shootings as Australia did, they don’t mean that we should institute background checks on private sales; they mean that they we should ban and confiscate guns. No amount of wooly words can change this. Again, one doesn’t bring up countries that have confiscated firearms as a shining example unless one wishes to push the conversation toward confiscation.
[….]
Obama gave the impression that gun-violence is on the increase. This is false. As both Pew and the Department of Justice recorded last year, the majority of Americans believe that gun violence is proliferating when it is in fact dropping. This year marked a 20-year low. More than anything, America has a copycat problem in its schools.
…The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that from 2002-2011, 95 percent of total homicide incidents involved a single fatality, 4 percent involved two victims, 0.6 percent involved 3 victims, and only .02 percent involved four or more victims. Another study performed between 1976 and 2005 yields similar results — that less than one-fifth of 1 percent all murders in the United States involved four or more victims. In other words, the bottom line is that out of every 10,000 incidents of homicide, roughly two are mass killings.
Further, contrary to what the zeitgeist may suggest, mass shootings are not on the rise. Prominent criminologist James Alan Fox has found “no upward trend in mass killings” since the ’70s. Take campus statistics as an example: “Overall in this country, there is an average of 10 to 20 murders across campuses in any given year,” Fox told CNN (and roughly 99 percent of these reported homicides were not mass shootings). “Compare that to over 1,000 suicides and about 1,500 deaths from binge drinking and drug overdoses.” Mass shootings on college campuses lag far, far behind many much more prevalent social and mental health problems.
The rare nature of these incidents also holds true for safety in K-12 schools, which garnered a significant amount of attention in the wake of the tragedies in Columbine and Newtown. According to two reports by the Centers for Disease Control, the probability of a child “dying in school in any given year from homicide or suicide was less than one in 1 million between 1992 and 1994 and slightly greater than one in 2 million between 1994 and 1999.”
Of course any story like the above needs a positive one added to it. The Blaze has this:
Two armed criminals reportedly put a gun to a 17-year-old girl’s head on Monday night as she was outside retrieving something from a car. The man, whose intentions still aren’t entirely clear, then ordered the teenager to take them into her house — a decision that would prove to have deadly consequences.
Peering out the window of the St. Louis home were the girl’s mother and father, each prepared to protect their daughter with deadly force. There was also a 5-year-old boy in the house, though his relationship to the family wasn’t known on Tuesday.
The girl’s father, a 34-year-old man, reportedly observed the men walking towards his home while holding a gun to his daughter’s head, a sight that no father ever wants to see. He quickly retrieved his firearm and his wife did the same.
The brave dad then confronted the two criminals and opened fire, hitting both suspects with accurate shots…
No doubt we will hear how the current heatwaves in Australia are “unprecedented” and evidence of dangerous man-made global warming.
They are neither “global” nor “unprecedented”.
In the great heatwave of 1896, with nearly 200 deaths, the temperature at Bourke did not fall below 45.6 degC (114.08 fahrenheit) for six weeks, and the maximum was 53.3 degC (127.94 degF). Bushfires raged throughout NSW and 66 people perished in the heat.
In 1897, Perth had an 18 day heatwave with a record of 43.3 degC (109.94 degF). Other heatwaves were reported at Winton, 1891, Melbourne 1892, Boulia 1901, Sydney 1903, Perth 1906 and so on.
Why don’t we hear of these severe heatwaves from the past? Simple – the government Bureau of Meteorology conveniently ignores all temperature records before 1910.
Fact: Homicides were falling before the Australian firearm ban. In the seven years before and after the Australian ban, the rate of decline was identical (down to four decimal places). Homicides dropped steeply starting in 2003, but all of this decline was associated with non-firearm and non-knife murders (fewer beatings, poisonings, drownings, etc.). 33
