Starting to hot up again.......................

Janis Joplin...................Summertime

All other things being equal...................

....................I'm 97% sure that I prefer global warming to global cooling.   My favorite optimist has the story.  A few cherry-picked quotes:

" If we aspire to keep the show on the road for another 10,000 years, we will have to understand ice ages."

“winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change”.

"All of human civilisation happened in an interglacial period, with a relatively stable climate, plentiful rainfall and high enough levels of carbon dioxide to allow the vigorous growth of plants. Agriculture was probably impossible before then, and without its hugely expanded energy supply, none of the subsequent flowering of human culture would have happened.

"That interglacial will end."

The glory of living.....................................

.............................................without air conditioning.  A wee excerpt:


There are positive aspects of going without. Fewer house guests. More dinner invitations. That humble-bragging business. Showers. I can’t tell you how rewarding showers feel. And ice cream tastes way better.


Air conditioning made Americans greedy and silly. Once the country got hooked on central air, strange things materialized: windows that don’t open, the office sweater in August, summer colds, Las Vegas, football in Phoenix.

Yep...................................................

via

This probably counts...............................

..................................as global warming.   Full story here.

Hmm..............................................?

Wishful (and obsessive) thinking........................

Janis Joplin.........................................Summertime (live)

If I had to guess.............................

.........I'd say this near-perfect plasma sphere has far more to say about global warming and cooling than anything us humans do.  Just a guess though.

Keeping cool..............................

thanks Ann (please be sure to heed her warnings)

Legalities........................................

Friend Bilbo, who regularly shares some wonderful cartoons, is pretty worked up about Edward Snowdon, as evidenced by this post.  I don't have an opinion yet on Mr. Snowden, but this excerpt from Bilbo bothers me a bit:

Let's establish one thing up front: the program that Mr Snowdon, with all the vast, accumulated wisdom of his 29 years, exposed was perfectly legal under US law. It was approved by Congress, vetted by the courts, and operated under a network of legal and procedural oversight provisions designed to protect the rights of US persons. Reasonable people may (hell, will) disagree over whether the program is moral, as opposed to legal, and whether Congress has taken its oversight responsibilities seriously enough, but the simple fact remains that Mr Snowdon exposed for his own reasons a very expensive, very secret, very legal program intended to protect you and I ... and him ... from those who would do us harm.

After reading that paragraph, it reminded me of this quote from Walter Williams:

I will confess this "it's legal" argument hits one of my hot buttons.  Reasonable people may believe that this trivializes a very important issue, but, ok.  In Ohio, and in Newark, we have a whole host of very nice and very capable people in government who are "double dipping."  Double dipping occurs when you have worked in government for twenty or twenty-five years and become eligible for retirement, with said retirement benefits to be paid immediately upon retirement.  The result of this legality is that 50 year olds (nice and capable people) who began working for the government in their twenties, can retire today and begin collecting their benefits tomorrow.  Mind you, they are 50 years old, perhaps at their most productive age.  Since they are so productive, it only seems logical that we keep them working; after all, somebody has to do the job.  Makes perfect sense.  So, the day after they retire, they are rehired to work at the same job they just retired from, collecting the same paycheck as before, but now with their retirement pay as well.  Ergo, double dipping.  Oh, and if you comment on this you are quickly told it is legal.

Government employees receiving an extraordinary financial benefit created by other government employees, spending money not their own, with said benefit not being available to non-governmental employees.  But, it's legal.  Right.