Angelina Jolie Confirms Role in Ayn Rand Movie

According to Variety.com, it’s official; Angelina Jolie will play Dagny Taggart in the film adaption of Ayn Rand’s iconic masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. This movie has been planned for decades with everyone from Clint Eastwood to (even) Robert Redford wanting lead roles in the movie. More details on the story can be found here. (Thanks to Betsy Speicher for the URL.)

A Breath of Fresh Air

It was wonderful to see Richard Straw’s excellent letter to the editor in the SCMP today, regarding claims by global warming alarmists. To quote from Mr. Straw:

The chief proponent of anthropogenic global warming is US scientist Michael Mann who, along with a number of colleagues, is famous for his "hockey-stick" temperature graph – the sticky-up bit on his line chart is supposed to represent where global temperatures are today relative to the past several hundred years.

The work of Dr Mann and company underpinned the stance taken by the 2001 United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, Dr Mann’s studies and conclusions have been formally challenged by scientists and economists (a graph is a graph is a graph, as the South China Morning Post’s very own Jake van der Kamp will tell you) in reputable scientific literature because they have been unable to replicate the numbers.

Of course Dr. Mann has quite a notorious reputation. More information on the hockey stick effect can be found here on John Daly’s website.

Spread by the Sword

Islamic militants are protesting against Joseph Ratzinger (the Pope) for saying that Islam is spread by the sword. They burn churches, and kill a nun. Then according to a news story by Associated Press. We have this:

Al-Qaida in Iraq and its allies said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross," saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. … We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the ‘jizya’ tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (being killed by) the sword."

And this:

"You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God’s rule is established governing all people and nations," said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups in Iraq.

And this:

Another Iraqi extremist group, Ansar al-Sunna, challenged "sleeping Muslims" to prove their manhood by doing something other than "issuing statements or holding demonstrations."

And finally this:

"If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house," the group said in a Web statement, referring to the pope, "then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome."

Chilling. How much longer will our own politicians and leaders ignore the provocation and hatred these people preach? How much longer will the man in the street shrug, or turn the other cheek? How much longer will left wing intellectuals continue to not only apologize for the militants, but also blame the West for the hatred the militants spew out? How much longer – probably until after it was too late.

Same Sex Marriage

I noticed this week’s HK Magazine is doing a cover story on the lesbian scene in Hong Kong. I will have a look at this article over the next few days. But it does raise another issue – that of same sex marriage, or same sex civil unions.

I want to state, that I think same sex relations are abnormal. If other people wish to shun such couples, they should be free to do so. The natural union is of man and woman. However this does not make same sex relations immoral, if the people involved have thought about the issue and implications carefully. If such people truly believe they will be happy together, then it is their choice to make. After all, their own individual life is the proper standard of value, not some make believe mystical creature.

Which leads me to the next point. Marriage is not a mystical union dreamed up in another dimension. Marriage is essentially a contract between two people. It is a truly special contract, based on respect for each other’s values and mutual love. A married couple centre their family, money, and lives around each other.

So if two people of the same sex wish to contract to live the rest of their lives with each other, this too should be backed up by law. That is, they should have the same rights as people of the opposite sex who marry. Whether this is called marriage or a civil union, is not so important, either way it has the same characteristics of marriage.

I wonder how much support there is for the idea of same sex civil unions.

At It Again

I don’t have a lot of respect for Joseph Ratzinger (the current Pope). But he did make a good identification on the weekend – specifically that Islam is spread by the sword.

Now Muslims worldwide have been demonstrating, and burning churches. How can anyone say that Islam is a religion of peace? It is a religion of submission.

Of course, the real battle is not really Muslim versus Christian. Some might observe it to be Muslim versus non-Muslim. A better identifiation is Islam versus rationality.

Environmentalist Lies

Last week one Mark Williams claimed in a letter to the SCMP that the 17,000 scientists who signed the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine included Ginger Spice, and a character from the TV series M*A*S*H. The list of scientists who signed the petition is freely available at the website for the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. The list of characters for the cast of M*A*S*H can be found here.

The website also notes that of the 17,000 signatures that were verified there were 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists. They also note that there were 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences that make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth’s plant and animal life.

Mr. Williams claims are just arbitrary noise. It would take too long to refute every piece of nonsense that comes out of his mouth.

Clearing up a Misconception

Some people look at Hong Kong and see it as a bastion of capitalism. Unfortunately with the growing welfare state mentality here – and Henry Tang’s obsession to widen the tax base to pay for this folly, Hong Kong is becoming less capitalistic every day. Of course, the capitalist solution is to narrow the tax base, recognizing that taxation is theft.

Others point to the property tycoons, and say they are examples of capitalism. I would beg to differ. One of the characteristics of capitalism is a free market. Yet, time after time, property companies have asked the government to intervene in the market. Indeed, they seem to be the biggest supporters of environmentalists here. Could it be that these environmentalists serve a purpose to help restrict the supply of land, thus pushing up property prices? Or to help existing building owners preserve their harbour views, at the expense of those looking to purchase a home or place to work. Whilst I support a property company’s right to build what they wish, I definitely do not support them, when they ask for special favours. I think the biggest example of a non-capitalist is Richard Li. The method seems simple. Find a market (e.g. Cyberport), then ask the government for exclusivity, to stop any competition.

If we really want more competition, more government is not the answer. The government needs to end special favours – get out of the market entirely. One could do a whole laundry list of special favours granted. These include the airline companies, power companies, property companies, and telecommunications companies. Taking airline companies, how much cheaper would airfares be if special privileges for Cathay Pacific were removed? Now just apply this to every industry, and ignore the "special cases" presented by each company that runs to the government, begging for special favours.

Same Old Tricks

(Dear reader: please excuse the font mess here, typepad seems to have a problem putting it all into one font.)

It appears that Ordinary Gweilo is up to his old tricks again – personal attacks, selective quoting, and sitting firmly on the fence.

Mr. G takes issue with my letter to the post earlier this week – questioning the objectivity of the source of one of my quotes, one Robert Carter of James Cook University. This is a common tactic of the left – attack a scientist because he is getting funding from a corporation. As I explained in the previous post, this argument can equally be applied to scientists who are trying to get government funding – invent a scary story to get a politician to finance the work. One actually needs some sort of PROOF before saying someone’s work is flawed – saying they get money from government or private sources is not proof.

I also explained that the 17,000 scientists that signed the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) were not “right-wing politicians, businessmen, entertainment stars and a few academics”. They were ordinary scientists rejecting claims by the politically charged IPCC that global warming is man-made. The credentials of the signatories were carefully checked. Two-thirds had advanced degrees in science.

Mr. G also selectively ignores a key part of my letter to the post. Maybe he also missed the point, which was to show that there was NO scientific consensus as Al Gore claims. From my original letter:

In a recent [Wall Street Journal] op-ed Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, stated that there was no scientific consensus on global warming. He also noted, “Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists–especially those outside the area of climate dynamics.”  He called Mr. Gore’s movie “shrill alarmism”.

To look at Mr. G’s comments on the issue of global warming:

However, we don’t really know whether global warming is going to continue, what (if anything) we can do about it, or what impact it will have.

This is just hot air – taking two views and balancing them out. One can do with this with anything. Imagine the police saying, well we have the statement from the bank robbers, and the bank tellers. We better let the robbers go, because we don’t know who is telling the truth. He goes on:

The question is whether they will wondering why we were worrying about it, or why we failed to do anything about it before it was too late.

I think that it’s entirely possible that at some time in the future people will look back at the arguments about global warming and wonder why it was such a controversial subject.

More space filling hot air. It’s like saying: "Either Australia or England will probably win the Ashes". He goes on:

Surely common sense dictates that we should take the problem seriously and do something about it, but it doesn’t have to be the scary things that some people seem to fear.

I think Mr. G is confused over common sense, and is using it as gut feeling. When one acts on common sense, one usually looks at the facts of the matter. The facts are that global warming alarmists rely almost exclusively on computer models predicting 50 years into the future. They can’t even forecast the weather ten days ahead. These models have been notoriously unreliable. If one looks at the typical statements that accompany these models, they typically use words like could, might, perhaps. (Christine Loh’s columns are riddled with them.) The global models say nothing. They are just arbitrary statements. He concludes:

Now, that wasn’t painful, was it?  I think I’d have to agree with The Economist:

…although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change.

He does not say how he arrives at those chances. Did he just balance out the views of two conflicting sets of scientists. This brings me back to the original theme of my letters. There is no overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is man made as Al Gore claims. As Richard Straw notes in his letter to the SCMP:

Here’s the bottom line. Many leading scientists, including members of the US National Academy of Sciences, simply do not believe that man’s carbon-dioxide input is big enough to alter the Earth-ocean-atmosphere system. It is like pouring one more beer down the throat of a hefty expat in a Wan Chai bar – it will have a negligible impact.

Global Warming is Not Man-Made

One of the shrill claims that environmentalists (including Al Gore) make is that there is scientific consensus that global warming is caused by man. This is a total lie. There are many scientists who say that global warming is not caused by man. The petition project by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is one example. Over 17,000 scientists (two thirds with advanced degrees) signed the petition.

Of course, this scares environmentalists such as Richard Fielding who claims in today’s South China Morning Post:

The signatories – 17,000 right-wing politicians, businessmen, entertainment stars and a few academics – were hardly scientists, as he claims. The petition is part of a sustained campaign sponsored by the energy industries to deny global warming.

This is typical smearing by the left, and is a blatant distortion of fact. A simple reading of the petition project shows this to be the opposite. The signatories were scientists, independent of any industry. Even if they were financed, industry too has the right to publish the truth. If they distort the facts (like the tobacco industry tried to do), they lose their reputation – this is something the left clearly does not understand.

If anything there has been a lot of controversy over the original IPCC report, which apparently was changed after it was approved — at the behest of NGO’s who wanted a more alarmist document.

Let’s ask, why is Al Gore making his movie? Why do environmentalists make such claims? To get publicity, and get money?

Richard Lindzen (Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT), the has an interesting summary of the typical way that environmentalists get their funding. He calls it the iron triangle of alarmism. That is what we are seeing again from Al Gore, and people like Mr. Fielding.

The Terrorists’ Motivation

Let’s remember the 9/11 victims. but also identify the motivation of the Islamic militants that committed the 9/11 atrocities.

We often hear that Islam is a religion of peace. This is not true, it is actually a religion of submission, and war. Islamic militants have committed atrocities in London, New York, Spain, Bali. The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Lebanon. Iran’s former president questions whether the Renaissance was a good thing; and their current president wants to wipe Israel, and America off the map. Indeed, Islamic militants want SUBMISSION to Sharia law in every country in the world.

What motivates Islamic terrorists. Here are a list of quotes from the Koran (stripped of all the flowery language): http://p4h.humanists.net/Islam%20peace/QuranPeace.html