Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Headline: U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD.

Lead paragraph:

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

Considering that actual shells with chemical weapons have been found, that logically refutes the “no,” but I suspect logic remains outside the grasp of some AP reporters.

In Whitehorse, Canada, a Black Lab took a truck for a drive:

A pedestrian in a Whitehorse suburb was taken aback Tuesday night when a dog drove by in a red pickup truck.

Police say a person was out for a walk when the truck with a black Labrador at the wheel passed by.

When police arrived, the truck was in the middle of Thompson Road in Granger, blocking traffic. The dog was still behind the wheel.

All’s well that ends with no fatalities in Canada:

There were no injuries or damages, and no indication from police they plan to charge the owner.

Which is unlike East St. Louis, where the dog would be ticketed for driving without a license and without insurance and the owner charged with endangering an animal.

Progressive Insurance trades insurance discounts for little boxes that track on users’ driving habits.

Progressive chairman of the board Peter B. Lewis has given over fourteen million dollars to pro-Democratic 527 groups.

Vast Left Wing Conspiracy uniting politicians and corporations to strip privacy from common citizens? You read it here first!

Cock your tin foil helmet to a rakish angle and follow me.

Scientists and policy makers think global warming probably continues unabashed, according to the simulations they run, and as a result, the United States should hobble its industry and become a socialist state like enlightened European failures-in-making:

• Blair to urge US to take tougher action on global warming
  

  Tony Blair will today urge the United States to commit itself to a tougher action to combat global warming and promise that a list of green policies will be included in Labour’s general election manifesto.

  The Prime Minister is to raise the profile of green issues as part of a drive to woo back people disaffected by the Iraq war.

  Labour’s private polling shows that “progressive voters”, many of whom were alienated by Mr Blair’s stance on Iraq, regard the environment as a top priority.

  Speaking to a conference staged by the Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme, Mr Blair will stop short of a full-frontal attack on President George Bush but make clear Britain will expect America to accept its responsibilities on global warming when it takes over the presidency of the G8 group of leading industrialised nations in January.

  Mr Blair, who believes the Kyoto Treaty does not go far enough, will reiterate his call for the United States to sign it. He will identify climate change as one of the greatest challenges facing the planet, saying that one country acting alone cannot solve the problem.

  Thanks, Tony, for calling for American action while overseas. How about talking to dirty-but-growing industrial Asian companies, who pump out greenhouse gases, soot, and air pollution that blow easterly towards our countries? No? Can’t stop them because they don’t have “enlightened” populations willing to commit seppukku over their unjust strength?

  Why don’t you spend time on possible dreams. Like getting the United States to adopt the Euro.

• SAN FRANCISCO
  ‘Cool gray city’ projected to turn murderously hot
  Temperatures likely to rise by mid-century as a result of global warming, study warns

  San Francisco’s trademark cool summers are likely to heat up dramatically before the century is over, scientists said Monday, bringing frequent heat waves and a big jump in heat-related deaths.

  A new city-by-city analysis of California climate projections suggests that everybody’s favorite “cool gray city of love” may be in for a shock from the local impact of global climate change.

  Critics, however, said that such doomsday global-warming scenarios were highly speculative — designed mostly to sway public opinion and influence policy-makers considering proposals to cut heat-trapping vehicle emissions.

  The latest projections by the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., suggest that in a worst-case scenario, San Francisco can expect 55 heat- wave days — three or more consecutive days of temperatures above 79 degrees — a year by the 2050s and up to 135 such days a year by the 2090s, compared with only 10 to 15 heat-wave days in the 1990s.

  Union of Concerned Scientists? Sounds like they might have an agenda outside of science, but it’s remarkable that anyone can claim the mantle of “scientist” by writing computer simulations of things that might be instead of studying things that are where conclusions need to be repeatable.

  But then again, I’ve never gotten a government grant, so what do I know about real science?

Meanwhile, after a notoriously cool summer:

Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts colder, snowier winter for much of country

Time to break out the long underwear. The Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a colder and snowier winter for a wide swath of the country.

The editor-in-chief says it’ll be colder than average from the Rocky Mountains eastward.

The exceptions will be Montana, Wyoming, northern New England and the Appalachians, but even these areas will be very cold toward the end of winter.

More snow than usual is expected from the Great Lakes, across New England and down to the Middle Atlantic states, and from northeastern New Mexico, across northern Texas and Oklahoma, across the Ohio Valley to the Middle Atlantic.

The almanac is the oldest continuously published periodical in North America, making its debut in 1792. It also boasts a weather accuracy rate of 80 percent.

Maybe it’s once again time to switch the unproven longterm meterologipolitical assertion back to global cooling brought on by industrialization.

Pardon me, fellows, but it’s the height of hubris to know that the actions of this single species of man can so easily and irrevocably alter global and even celestial mechanisms of which we have incomplete understanding. I pray we don’t all pay for the hubris of a few “enlightened” despots.