JUST IN TIME for the big day in Copenhaguen, the Climategate scandal got even bigger: "What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock." It's the Russians, but there's many more indications that it really is.

AMAZING: sharks spotted on the coast of Australia by Google Maps (sort of). Check it out...

THE WHOLE STORY on why Berlusconi was punched. Funny.

IF THEY CALL your bullsh*t in Copenhagen, no less, you got a problem:

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
 
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
 
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.


[...] Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community. “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

“You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”

A GLOOMY CHRISTMAS for Spanish retailers:

Spanish holiday spending will drop 9.1 percent this season, according to Deloitte, more than the 6.3 percent decline forecast for western Europe. El Corte Ingles SA, the nation’s biggest department store operator, is advertising 70 percent discounts to lure shoppers.

The credit crunch exacerbated the collapse of Spain’s housing boom last year, leaving people struggling to pay household debt that is among the highest in the euro region. The protracted crisis means more than half the jobless, including Serrano’s husband, have been out of work too long to get full benefits. Spain’s unemployment rate is 19 percent.

The outlook for next year doesn’t give consumers much reason for holiday cheer. The economy is forecast to contract 0.8 percent in 2010, lagging behind the European Commission’s estimate for European expansion of 0.7 percent. Spanish unemployment is expected to rise to 20 percent.

PEGGY NOONAN:

The political headline this week is that President Obama appears to be attempting to move toward the center, or what he believes is the center. We saw the big pivot in two major speeches, one on the economy and the other, in Oslo, on peace.

If it is real—if the pivot signals a true, partial or coming shift, if it is not limited to rhetorical flurries—it is welcome news in terms of public policy. It also tells us some things. It tells us White House internal polling is probably worse than the public polls telling us the president has been losing support among independents. It tells us the mounting criticism from Republicans, conservatives and others has had a real effect. It tells us White House officials have concluded they were out on a cliff. It tells us they are calculating that after a first year of governing from the left, and winning whatever they win on health care, they believe they can persuasively shift to the center, that it will work.
 
Which is the great political question: Will it work? With congressional elections a year away, will it help make Democrats safe and keep Congress?

Good question; keep reading.

A SAUDI TV channel is finally allowing women to be presenters. Great step for human rights! Oh, wait...

BINGO:

So why do leaders like Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown continue identifying themselves with the climate change agenda and policies like cap and trade? Perhaps it's best to see this as a clash of classes. Today's environmental movement reflects the values of a large portion of the post-industrial upper class. The big money behind the warming industry includes many powerful corporate interests that would benefit from a super-regulated environment that would all but eliminate potential upstarts.

These people generally also do not fear the loss of millions of factory, truck, construction and agriculture-related jobs slated to be "de-developed." These tasks can shift to China, India or Vietnam--where the net emissions would no doubt be higher--at little immediate cost to tenured professors, nonprofit executives or investment bankers. The endowments and the investment funds can just as happily mint their profits in Chongqing as in Chicago.

Global warming-driven land-use legislation possesses a similarly pro-gentry slant. Suburban single family homes need to be sacrificed in the name of climate change, but this will not threaten the large Park Avenue apartments and private retreats of media superstars, financial tycoons and the scions of former carbon-spewing fortunes. After all, you can always pay for your pleasure with "carbon offsets."

GLOBAL WARMING, a matter of perspective...

OBAMA not starting well his Europe trip for the Nobel prize ceremony this morning:

Finally some Europeans are angry with Obama—the very ones who are awarding him his Nobel. Katarina Andersson on the president's decision to decline lunch with King Harald and skip his own Nobel exhibit.

A day before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the president’s treatment of his Norwegian hosts has become hot news across Scandinavia.

TROUBLE in Utopia...

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
 
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
 
The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

NO HYPOCRISY, NOOOO: Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges. Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

NOW THIS is indeed a change of strategy:

AMAZON, the world’s biggest online retailer and scourge of bookshops everywhere, is planning a surprise invasion of the British high street.

Property landlords said that the American company, which has a market value of $59.1 billion (£35.6 billion), had launched a secret search for bricks-and-mortar stores to support its rapidly growing website. It is understood to be scouring the country for high-profile sites just as the Borders book chain is shutting up shop.
 
It represents an extraordinary reversal from the dotcom boom, when there were fears that internet shopping would kill off the high street. It would also be the most high-profile move by a web-only retailer into stores.

Bezos seems able to pull off anything he does.

UPDATE. Amazon has denied this.

MARILYN THE POTHEAD? There's video...

SPAIN is the new sick man of Europe, says The Economist.

BE CAREFUL because the story about the man who supposedly was 23 years in coma but conscious could be a fake: read this and especially this. Certainly I'm not qualified to judge this. Any doctor around?

UPDATE (Nov 26): Michael Shermer comments too.

WEB SITE STORY: cleverly funny.

THIS IS almost like Johnny Got His Gun:

A car crash victim diagnosed as being in a coma for the past 23 years has been conscious the whole time.

Rom Houben was paralysed but had no way of letting doctors know that he could hear every word they were saying.

'I dreamed myself away,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.

He added: 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear.'

It must have been a real nightmare.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA to raise the EU's stature: put two virtual unknowns in charge!

A TOAST FOR THAT! "Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests."

ANOTHER GOOD ONE by The Onion.


Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

I CAN'T BELIEVE someone like Bruce Bartlett could manage to write such a stupid thing:

In 1944, the Austrian economist F.A. Hayek published an extraordinarily influential book, The Road to Serfdom. In it, he argued that liberalism eventually leads to totalitarianism; that is, once a nation has embarked on the creation of a welfare state, there is no natural limit to the size of government until it controls everything, socialism becomes pervasive and political freedom evaporates.

It is an argument that made sense at the time Hayek made it. Liberals were indeed soft on communism in those days and engaged in a massive expansion of government throughout Europe. In England, where Hayek was living when he wrote his book, much private industry was being nationalized, cradle-to-grave welfare programs were being instituted and many of those advocating such measures were not shy about pointing to the Soviet Union as a model to follow.

Since Hayek's book appeared, it has been an article of faith among American conservatives and libertarians that every expansion of government is a step on the slippery slope to totalitarianism. National health insurance today, the gulag tomorrow, many of those on the right genuinely believe, often citing Hayek in support.

Consequently, it is axiomatic that Europe, which is much further along the road to a welfare state than the U.S., is also further along the road to socialism and totalitarianism. Thus it is a grave insult among conservatives for one to be accused of wanting to Europeanize the American economy. It is only a small step removed from being called a communist or Marxist. The difference is only one of degree.

I am often accused of wanting to Europeanize America these days--my friend Larry Kudlow always says so--because I think the magnitude of our fiscal problem is so large that a significant tax increase is inevitable, and that the magnitude of that tax increase is so great that we will eventually need a value-added tax because it will be impossible to get enough revenue through the income tax. Raising income tax rates enough to plug our fiscal hole would be much too debilitating, economically.

In the conservative mind, the VAT, which is embedded in the prices of goods, is the foundation upon which the European welfare state rests. Without its enormous revenue-raising capacity the Europeans never could have financed their welfare states. In short, without the VAT there would be no welfare state in Europe, government would be smaller and the threat of totalitarianism would be much less, conservatives reckon.

By advocating a VAT, I am, in effect, advocating totalitarianism, many of my friends believe. If we institute a VAT it will be like pouring gasoline on the fire of big government. It will get bigger overnight. The only thing holding this country back from having a welfare state as large as Europe's, conservatives argue, is the low level of taxation that most Americans are loath to abandon. Thus in their own minds, conservatives believe that holding the line on taxes, no matter how large the deficit, is the essential prerequisite for the preservation of liberty.

The only problem with this analysis is that it has no factual basis whatsoever. If Hayek were even remotely correct, all of Europe would be one huge gulag by this time. At the very least, Europe would be mired in poverty, growth nonexistent and freedom hanging on by the thinnest of threads.

Well, if you turn someone else's argument into a cartoon it's very easy to say it's wrong, isn't it. Or if you see the world in black and white with no shades of grey then you can't see there's the possibility that Europe is further down the road, although not so much that it's already there. Yet.

YOANI SANCHEZ, the heroic Cuban blogger, was arrested and beaten with a friend by Castro thugs yesterday. They finally let her go and she's reasonably OK now, fortunately.

LOL: "Congress Approves $500 Billion For Monument To Human Folly" (The Onion)

THESE VIDEOS are creepy-ish.

THE PAIN IN SPAIN falls everywhere:

Spain’s unemployment figures are truly shocking. Almost one in every five workers is out of a job. Only Latvia faces a worse problem. The Spanish employment minister, struggling to put on a brave face, points out the rate of increase is slowing, but that is cold comfort to the millions on the dole. Spain faces a long, hard battle to get back the jobs it has lost.

At 19.3 percent in September, the jobless figure is more than double the EU average of 9.2 percent.


[...] The European Commission sees no improvement in employment for the next two years, while some economists forecast further deterioration. The government is preparing another stimulus package, this disease will be around for years to come.

Plus this:

The new jobless numbers come as the European Commission projected Tuesday that the Spanish economy won’t return to growth until 2011 and the government’s budget deficit will likely reach double digits this year and next.

Meanwhile, in a mental journey to Mars:

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said that Spain’s economy would begin emerging from recession “at the end of this year or the beginning of 2010″, though he acknowledged that unemployment - now nearly 18 percent - would remain high for some time.

He doesn't even realize you can't really have one without the other.

CAN YOU TRUST IRAN? In a word, no:

Satellite photos indicate that Iran has increased production at a uranium mine, underscoring the need for wider UN inspections to determine whether the country is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Evidence of stepped-up activity at the Gchine mine, near the Persian Gulf coast city of Bandar Abbas, is seen in pictures obtained by Bloomberg News and the Washington-based New America Foundation, according to four nuclear analysts who examined the images. The mine could produce enough uranium to craft at least two atomic bombs a year, experts said.

WHEN A GEEK has twins...

THIS WILL GIVE YOU the best idea of the sorry state of education nowadays; it's from the UK, but give and take it should be the same mostly anywhere....

(via)

IF THIS finally sees the light, it can't come soon enough:

A new kind of portable electrochemical battery that can produce thousands of hours of power - and soon replace the expensive regular or rechargeable batteries in hearing aids and sensors and eventually in cellphones, laptop computers and even electric cars - has been developed at Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

The unique battery is based on silicon as a fuel that reverts to its original sand. The battery can also be left on the shelf for years and inserted into a device to provide immediate power.