Is it possible to doubt that Obama is passionately devoted to Islam when he has made it glaringly obvious in his speeches and his deep obeisance to the “King” of Saudi Arabia; has deliberately alienated the US government from Israel; and has given an instruction to NASA administrator Charles Bolden to find – as a priority, rather than space exploration which has been all but totally abandoned – “a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution [in fact, non-historic and almost entirely mythical - JB] to science and math and engineering”?

Here’s further confirmation of his profound concern for, and involvement with, Islam in news from Creeping Sharia:

The U.S. ambassador to Kenya has publicly urged Kenyans to vote in favor of the proposed constitution, including the kadhis [sharia] courts, arguing that passage is key to keeping Kenya stable. …

The Obama admin may have spent up to $10 million tax payer dollars supporting the proposed Kenyan constitution that includes provisions for sharia courts.

Kenya is also where Obama’s cousin Raul [Raila] Odinga promised sharia law during his Kenyan campaign, and then waged violent attacks leading to hundreds of deaths to steal a position after a failed election.

For background to the issue of sharia courts in Obama’s ancestral home Kenya, and more on Obama’s support  for his terrorist cousin Odinga, see this January 6, 2008 article at Atlas Shrugs:

Obama’s ties to Kenya run deep. He knows the political landscape. Why would he back such a violent, dangerous man who made a pact with the Muslims to institute sharia? Obama’s bias for his fellow Luo [Raila Oginga Odinga] was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila’s “stooge.” …

Raila Oginga Odinga has … a scheme to carry out a second coup attempt in Kenya (his first attempt in 1982 failed) …

Those who have an interest in Kenya witnessed the post-party-nomination violence a couple of weeks ago in Oginga’s strongholds. People who chose to vote against anyone his party chose were killed.

For a few days both Nairobi and Kisumu were literally ablaze. Candidates who escaped the violence and who chose to run on parties other than the party Oginga was running on had to publicly step down when Oginga attended their rallies and publicly asked them to step down and support his party. …

[In 2003] Muslim leaders in Kenya [were] threatening armed conflict if the new Kenyan constitution [did] not enshrine Islamic courts (known in Kenya as Kadhi courts).

The US Ambassador to Kenya is Michael E. Ranneberger. In a recent speech in honor of International Women’s Day, he said:

I want to emphasize that the United States is strongly committed to promoting the rights of Kenyan women and their increased participation in all aspects of social, political, and economic life. This is a highly important dimension of the strong and growing partnership between the U.S. and Kenya.

Under unalterable sharia law, a woman’s testimony is half as valuable as a man’s; a woman may inherit only half as much as male heirs; a woman can be divorced at the whim of her husband and she does not have a right to keep her children; if a woman is raped she can be convicted of immorality and the punishment may be stoning to death. These are just some of the ways in which sharia law subjugates and victimizes women.

Apparently Mr Ranneberger sees no need to square his “commitment to promoting the rights of Kenyan women” with his urging Kenyans to adopt a constitution that would establish sharia law.

Such is US diplomacy in the era of Obama.

It is not difficult to see what Obama likes and does not like, wants and does not want, and what is the general thrust of his world-view and political agenda.

He likes climate change. It’s an ideal cause for the far left, because if only people can be hoodwinked into believing that it constitutes a threat to all life on the planet, government can claim that it must be dealt with by forcing us to change the way we live. Dealing with it can hugely tighten government control – not just by the US government but by some global uber-body that can enforce subjection world-wide.

He likes Islam. There’s a pile of evidence for this: his Cairo speech, his bowing to the “king” of Saudi Arabia, his reluctance to interfere with Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, his reaching out to Syria … the full list would be long.

He does not like American military superiority, or American exceptionalism in any form, including its superiority in space exploration (with its potential for enhancing military power).

On January 27, 2010, the Orlando Sentinel reported that:

NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all. …

The White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. …

The White House budget request, which is certain to meet fierce resistance in Congress, scraps the Bush administration’s Vision for Space Exploration and signals a major reorientation of NASA, especially in the area of human spaceflight.

“We certainly don’t need to go back to the moon,” said one administration official.

Everyone interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity, either because they are not authorized to talk for the White House or because they fear for their jobs.

But Indonesia and other Muslim countries will be getting US help with launching rockets?

On February 16, 2010, the same paper reported that:

Barack Obama has asked NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy.

Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change.

“We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,” Bolden said.

The most innovative nation in all the world and all history is the United States of America. One of its greatest characteristics – the product of its liberty – has long been its driving energy to look forward and upward, to reach new heights, to achieve ever more and better understanding of our universe. In nothing was this vision proved so spectacularly as in the exploration of space, the landing of men on the moon, the search with ingeniously devised spacecraft, loaded with technological marvels, ever further through the galaxy.

The leftists now in control don’t like it.

Charles Krauthammer writes:

Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space.

By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We’re not talking about Mars or the moon here. We’re talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.

Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.

But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the U.S. will have no access of its own for humans into space — and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.

Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will now be turned over to the private sector, while NASA’s efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It’s too expensive. It’s too experimental. And the safety standards for actually getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.

Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative “clean energy.” Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.

As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can’t afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles? …

Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It’s like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. …

Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen.

At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year — 1/300th of last year’s stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.

As for President Obama’s commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it?

Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy’s liberalism and Obama’s. Kennedy’s was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama’s is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat.

Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.

A tiny moon, Epimetheus, is seen above Saturn’s rings and in front of the large moon Titan.

See all 28 of NASA’s space pictures of the year 2009 here.

Man-made Global Warming was a thing built with the spit and cobwebs of cynical political manipulation and ingenuous credulity.

Warmists are struggling ever more frantically to defend their myth. No wonder. Not only reputations but whole industries have been built on it and TRILLIONS  have been invested in them. Governments have distorted economies because of it. Untold millions of people have been so convinced of it they cannot swallow the fact that it has been exposed as untrue. It is  believed in by many as a religious faith, and like any religious faith it may long continue to hold them in its spell.

The great economist Walter Williams writes about this at Investor’s Business Daily:

John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, in an hourlong television documentary five-part series titled “Global Warming: The Other Side,” presents evidence that our National Climatic Data Center has been manipulating weather data in the same way as the now-disgraced and under-investigation University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. The NCDC is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its manipulated climate data are used by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, a division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. …

Mounting evidence of scientific fraud might make little difference in terms of the response to man-made global warming hysteria. Why? Vested economic and political interests have emerged where trillions of dollars and social control are at stake. Therefore, many people who recognize the scientific fraud underlying global warming claims are likely to defend it anyway.

• Automobile companies have invested billions in research and investment in producing “green cars.”

• General Electric and Philips have spent millions lobbying Congress to outlaw incandescent bulbs so that they can force us to buy costly compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL).

• Farmers and ethanol manufacturers have gotten Congress to enact laws mandating greater use of their product, not to mention massive subsidies.

• Thousands of major corporations around the world have taken steps to reduce carbon emissions, including giants like IBM, Nike, Coca-Cola and BP, the oil company. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Dell have vowed to become “carbon neutral.”

Then there’s the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange that plans to trade in billions of dollars of greenhouse gas emission allowances. Corporate America and labor unions, as well as their international counterparts have a huge multitrillion-dollar financial stake in the perpetuation of the global warming fraud. Federal, state and local agencies have spent billions of dollars and created millions of jobs to deal with one aspect or another of global warming.

It’s deeper than just money. Schoolteachers have created polar-bear-dying lectures to frighten and indoctrinate our children when in fact there are more polar bears now than in 1950. They’ve taught children about melting glaciers.

Just recently, the International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit that its Himalayan glacier-melting fraud was done to “impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”

What would all the beneficiaries of the global warming hype do if it became widely known and accepted that mankind’s activities have very little to do with the Earth’s temperature? I don’t know, but a lot of people would feel and look like idiots.

I bet that even if the permafrost returned as far south as New Jersey, as it once did, the warmers and their congressional stooges would still call for measures to fight global warming.

Yet another revelation about the bad science behind the IPCC report on global warming. They’re coming thick and fast now.

From Canada Free Press, by Barry Napier:

IPCC [the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Again Shown to Be Liars!

This is the fourth exposé of IPCC lies and deception to emerge in the past two weeks. This time the lies are documented in a scientific paper, issued 27th January, 2010 (‘Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?’ by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts, in the SPPI Original Paper series. Copies from the Science and Public Policy Institute).

The incriminating paper shows how the IPCC eliminated GHCN [Global Historical Climatology Network] weather recording stations, starting in 1990. In the 1970s there were more than 6000 GHCN stations that helped to give average temperatures. In 1990 the IPCC dropped all but 1500 of these stations. Therefore, the same method of calculation was used even though the number of stations providing measurements fell to less than one quarter of all stations. This is one reason why the Russians warned the figures were fake. …

It is a simple fact that if the number of measurements went down by three quarters, then the size of anomalies must grow with it. That is, the areas covered by the remaining stations must be huge, with many variables in between.

But that is only the start. The IPCC then based their fake figures on stations that were mainly sited in the USA, and in places affected badly by urban heating! If that isn’t fakery, then what is?

There is plenty of evidence that urban heating is a very real problem when calculating actual temperatures. It is impossible to provide actual temperatures for urban heating areas, because one would have to also provide a very wide adjustment value, which would make measurements useless. But, the IPCC was desperate to convince us that big global warming was a reality. So, they literally cooked the books.

You will have to read the paper for yourselves, because it is 111 pages long – but it is an eye-opener. On its fourth page, there is the claim that instrument data has been “widely, systematically… tampered with (so that) it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century”. …

As for the oceans: “data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.” From 2003 to now is a ‘nothing’ time scale in which to claim warming of the seas! I think you will find that any reports that claim such warming are either written as second-source articles by gullible scientists who accept prejudiced first-reports, or by greeny activists, not by genuine oceanologists.

Though the IPCC claims the CRU was only one of many sources on which it based its 2007 report, this is shown to be a lie: “NOAA [National Oceanic and Athmospheric Administration - the US national weather service] and NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration], along with CRU [ Climatic Research Unit in Britian],  were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th century ‘global warming’. “ The CRU, then, was a major source, not just one of many. And we now know the CRU was involved in fraud and lies.

“Changes have been made to alter the historic record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.” Lies and more lies based on a deliberate alteration of data! As we keep saying – what we see today is consistent with natural cyclical patterns, with a few extremes thrown in… but all are natural. CO2 has nothing to do with it!

“Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or validate model forecasts.” The paper calls for an independent assessment undertaken by scientists who have “no vested interest in the outcome of evaluations.” The last of 15 summaries is that the IPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP [Global Change Research Program/Climate Change Science Program] require a “full investigation and audit” of their data.

So, we challenge all greenies and supporters of global warming to justify their stance! The data are corrupt; the IPCC has lied; governments are ruining their countries and paying out vast sums to Third World countries over a deception!

I repeat my legitimate question – how many more Climategates will it take to shut down global warming, climate change and CO2 frauds? How much longer will pro-greens continue to support climate change theories? And when will you at last oppose governments who want to strip you of every cent in your pocket, because of these climate frauds? Obama and Gordon Brown are driving hard to bring about huge changes to the USA because of fake climate change ideas. This has nothing to do with your well-being – it is to do with their Marxist ideals and your demise as free people.

Footnote February 1, 2010: It turns out that the scare over the Amazon rainforest was based on a false report too. Read about it here.

On December 7 the United Nations Conference on Climate Change is due to open in Copenhagen, although it is already rendered nugatory by the refusal of China and India, and the inability of the United States, to take those measures which would allow it to achieve its goal: world-wide redistribution of wealth by a global authority, an incipient world government.

Now that the United Nations IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report which launched the campaign towards this end has been exposed as a deliberate fraud, the conference can be nothing but a farce. It should be abandoned.

(Our posts on the fraud are Global warming scientists disgrace their profession and Making up science for political ends.)

A useful summary of the ‘smoking-gun’ emails is provided here. (This is a religious site that we don’t habitually visit, but in regard to this subject we are grateful for their useful work.)

Alan Caruba writes at Canada Free Press:

Now that CRU [Climatic Research Unit] and its conspirators have been exposed, there truly is no need to hold a December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen; one in which nations would be required to put limits on “greenhouse gas emissions” even though such gases, primarily carbon dioxide, have nothing to do with altering the Earth’s climate.

And that is why you are going to hear more about “climate change” and far less about “global warming.” Hidden in such discussions, intended to justify legislation and regulation, is that the Earth’s climate has always and will always change.

It is, for example, shameful and deceitful for the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to claim carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that should be regulated. The same applies to “cap-and-trade” legislation with the same purpose.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on studies of global warming and poured into agencies such as NASA that have lent credence to the global warming hoax.

“The U.S. taxpayer has much exposure here in the joint projects and collaborations which operated in reliance upon what the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit was doing,” says Christopher C. Horner, a longtime global warming skeptic. “There are U.S. taxpayer-funded offices and individuals involved in the machinations addressed in the emails, and in the emails themselves.”

Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, said that the initial revelations “give the appearance of a conspiracy to defraud, by parties working in taxpayer funded agencies collaborating on ways to misrepresent material on which an awful lot of taxpayer money rides.”

The climate, defined as long term trends, and the weather has nothing whatever to do with human activity and suggesting it does reveals the depth of contempt that people like Al Gore and his ilk have for humanity and those fleeced by purchasing “carbon credits” or paying more for electricity when their utility does.

The East Anglia CRU charlatans have been exposed. Most certainly, the United Nations IPCC should be disbanded in disgrace. It belongs in a museum of hoaxes right beside the Piltdown Man and the Loch Ness Monster.

The question of whether or not there is anthropomorphic global warming has decidedly not been settled, no matter how many scientists and politicians claim that it has.

The Freedom Society of  York University, England, is to hold a conference on climate change. One of the organizers is our British editor, Sam Westrop, founder of the Freedom Society,who writes this:

Thomas Jefferson once said that, “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” And so, with that quote in mind, and the understanding that scientific theories must be falsifiable, the Freedom Society is hosting ‘Climate Week’, a five-day event from the 26th to 30th October at the University of York.

The week will question the politics and ethics of climate change science… We do not know if anthropogenic climate change is occurring or not, but in order for us to draw a conclusion – especially as non-scientists – it is vital that the science be liberal, objective and untainted by political pressure…

There have been many examples of ‘scientific consensus’. A useful illustration is the former fear of Global Cooling that gained momentum in the 1960s. The first paragraph of a New York Times article, from 30th January 1961, entitled SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD IS COLDER; But Climate Experts Meeting Here Fail to Agree on Reasons for Change, read: “After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.“…

There are a growing number of cries that the IPCC has negated the traditional scientific method. The climatologist Roger Pielke, despite believing in anthropogenic climate change, has criticised the IPCC for its ill-gotten conclusions and has accused the scientific body of subjectively choosing data to support a selective view of climate change science…

Furthermore, the House of Lords Economics Committee has recently stated that, “We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.”

The IPCC has not just become a body of political scientists, but scientific politicians as well. These people’s professions have become adulterated with the idealism of environmental morality.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York brought to light the “absolute horror stories” about how some scientific journals and political bodies have engaged in the suppression of climate-sceptic scientists trying to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals. This conference included many afflicted current and former IPCC scientists from all over the globe.

The IPCC is not the only culprit … Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist at NASA, resigned because of the agency’s lack of scientific freedom.

Miskolczi said he wanted to publish and discuss his new research that showed “runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” but he claims that NASA refused to allow him. He recently said that, “Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

A consensus in one branch of science does not mean a consensus across all branches. For example, a recent survey of 51,000 scientists in Canada from the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists found that 68% of them disagreed with the statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.” The survey also stated that only 26% of scientists attributed global warming to “human activity such as burning fossil fuels.” …

It becomes only too apparent that there is a desperate need for …  free debate, given the drastic choices that Governments are prepared to make. Whether such decisions involve the complete overhaul of our energy sources, or the (ethically questionable) prevention of industrialisation in developing countries, the need to end scientific censorship is vitally important…

The University of York Freedom Society’s ‘Climate Week’ will not try to cover the complicated and vast subject of the science itself; instead it will highlight the dangers of academic suppression and weigh the ethical questions involved when dealing with such proscription. …

Climate Week will see many scientists, politicians, journalists and environmentalists, from all over Europe and ever further afield, come together for the first time in the UK …

It promises to be an interesting event, where debate will be lively.