Depressed

It is hard to watch the debacle going on at the formerly Catholic Notre Dame University. It has gotten to the point that if you do not want to make "accommodations" with the most extreme of pro-abortion agendas, well, the president of Notre Dame will call you a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nice.

I suppose I shouldn't be depressed by this turn of events. After all, it isn't as if I didn't predict them in a sense. In the second post I ever wrote for this blog I noted the following:

The object of this kind of writing, from... liberal Catholics... seems to be [the creation of] a Catholic church that will be safe for the party platform of the Democratic party. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. This need to "update" the Catholic church so that it is nearly identical with this or that contemporary political ideology troubles me. I feel the church plays a much more important role as a counter-cultural force. The church is supposed to represent eternal truths, not this decades fashions. Historically the church has gotten itself into trouble by being too of its time, not too little. The sad history of popes as petty tyrants playing out their games of political power is not a pretty one. But it is a history that will be repeated if the church gets involved in remaking itself in the image of our contemporary political institutions. However, the drive that impels the [liberal Catholics] of this world is strong. Anyone who opposes their vision is for them, well, a Nazi.

And, in the short run, I think [they] will win. That is why I consider myself a "partial Catholic." The wind has been blowing cold for some time. The church will be fundamentally altered in my lifetime, and the post Vatican II church in all its successes and failings, will cease to exist. So I keep my distance. It would be too painful for me to be a full blown Catholic.

And, a little over two years ago I noted the following in a discussion about the troubles in the Episcopal church:

The reason I'm interested in this sad spectacle is I'm sure this is exactly how things will play out in the Catholic Church once the "progressives" reach the majority. This movement represents the complete politicization of religion. By that I mean, this is the strongest expression of the belief that political ideology, of the "correct" sort, is the preeminent "moral" principle by which every category of human existence must be measured. Therefore everything, including religious beliefs, must be made subservient to ideology. It was once said that the Catholic Church made philosophy the handmaiden of theology. Well, the Episcopal Church is now attempting to make theology, political ideology's bitch.

Could the sad spectacle going on in Indiana be viewed as anything else but the movement of such an ideology into the "mainstream" of "Catholic" thought? I really don't see how it could be viewed as anything else.

I knew it would happen.

Somehow it isn't comforting.

The Fraud Continues, Only More Stupidly

The loose patchwork of carefully selected data, non-testable hypotheses, and non-verifiable computer models known as "Anthropogenic Global Warming" has been coming apart at the seems for awhile now. The ever increasing (near hysterical) attempts to stitch it back together are looking truly pathetic. Being a true believer, the USA Today publishes every last apology for this ideology masquerading as science. The latest:

As our legions of dedicated USA TODAY commenters enjoy pointing out, every year since 1998 — when the Earth's temperature peaked at a record high — has been cooler than that year. 2008, for example, was the planet's coolest year since 2000. Could this be evidence against global warming?

No, say two scientists in this week's issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The scientists, David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center and Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, say that up-and-down temperatures year-to-year don't undermine the overwhelming evidence for global warming.

"The reality of the climate system is that, due to natural climate variability, it is entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of 'cooling' superimposed on the longer-term warming trend due to anthropogenic [human-caused] greenhouse gas forcing," write the authors.

This would make some sense if we had hundreds of years worth of data showing Anthropogenic Global Warming. We don't. In fact, AGW was only supposed to have started in the late 1970's or early 1980's.

Think about that. Cooling that goes on for up to two decades, so these masters of logic tell us, would not be evidence that could counter a argument based upon warming that lasted at most two decades.

What? No one could be that stupid. They must have said something different.

"Climate scientists pay little attention to these short-term fluctuations as the short term 'cooling trends' mentioned above are statistically insignificant and fitting trends to such short periods is not very meaningful in the context of long-term climate change....

"Claims that global warming is not occurring that are derived from a cooling observed over such short time periods ignore this natural variability and are misleading," Easterling and Wehner conclude.

So, cooling observed over two decades would be statistically invalid, but warming over a similar period is a lead pipe certainty?

Yep, they are that stupid.

Its amazing what people will sign their names to when their research money is at stake.

Shocking!

The BBC shrieks:

The US government has opted to retain a Bush-era rule that limits protection for polar bears from the effects of global warming.

Environmental groups had been calling for the rule to be lifted, and the US Congress had given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the power to do so.

Mr Salazar said lifting the rule would create "uncertainty and confusion".

The rule means the government will act only against threats to polar bears that arise in their Arctic habitat....

"The Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation's carbon emissions," Mr Salazar said.

In a related ruling, the Obama administration also will not be offering protection to breasts suffering from the effects of gravity.

The BBC remains saddened, angered and stupid.

Apocalypse Now Later

So, it looks like we won't all be dying from Swine Flu.

You mean I'll have to give up hacking my lungs out until I expire? That will be a blow. I'll have nothing to do!

Besides, we haven't had time for "scientists" to tell us it was caused by SUV's.

Crazed Woman Rallies For Right To Murder Kulaks, Ukrainians

Yikes.