El Nino Collapses - Global Sea Ice Makes A Strong Comeback

North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures Back To 1980s Levels


Daily global sea ice anomalies versus 1979-2008 mean; data courtesy University of Illinois "cryosphere"

Global temperatures spiked during the last half of 2015 as a result of the strong El Nino and were still at very high levels relative-to-normal as recently as last month. In addition, global sea ice appeared to be impacted by El Nino as it took a steep dive during much of 2015 and remained at well below-normal levels going into this year. In the past couple of months, however, El Nino has begun to collapse and will likely flip to a moderate or strong La Nina (colder-than-normal water) by later this year.  In rather quick fashion, global temperatures have seemingly responded to the unfolding collapse of El Nino and global sea ice has actually rebounded in recent weeks to near normal levels. --Paul Dorian, Vencor Weather, 11 April 2016

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Would global warming increase both  flooding AND drought?

That is the prediction that Warmists are attached to.  But it runs counter to basic physics.  Warming should cause more evaporation off the oceans which will in turn fall as rain.  So more flooding would be a reasonable expectation during warming.  So how is warming supposed to cause drought too?

The short answer is "models" but leaning on them is leaning on a  broken reed.  A more substantial answer is that warmer weather will not only evaporate water off the seas but also off the land.  So you may have an initial drying effect on the land.  But wherever the evaporation comes from, it will end up as rain.  So there can be no net loss to the land.  The clouds will give its moisture back plus more moisture from the oceans.  And the earth surface is two thirds ocean so we are looking at a LOT more rain.

So a recent paper (below) has caused heartburn among Warmists.  It says that the slight warming of the 20th century did NOT cause drought -- which is what one would on basic principles expect and which is borne out by other studies -- e.g. "the proportion of Europe experiencing extreme and/or moderate drought conditions has changed insignificantly during the 20th century". And another finding for a dry region during C20:  "We found no evidence for a decrease either in mean annual rainfall or in the incidence of drought".

Note also the greening of the Sahel in late C20 and early C21.  Instead of getting drier, the semi-desert Sahel got greener.

So professional Warmist Joe Romm has rubbished the paper.  He says the paper is discredited and shows that it's conclusions are contradicted by "findings" from Warmist studies.  That contradiction should bother us not at all so let us look at the academic criticisms of the paper:

ANY scientific paper is open to criticism,  No study is perfect.  So the issue is whether the criticisms discover a fatal error or make an improbable generaliztion.  The criticisms Romm refers to are here.  And they are far from totally dismissive.  A few quotes:

In a recent study (Donat et al., 2016, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate2941) we found that, when aggregating over the dry and wet regions of the world, precipitation changes are consistent between models and observations over the past 60 years. Nevertheless, it is true that modelling and analysis of precipitation changes are still related to a number of uncertainties, especially when it comes to regional changes in precipitation. This is partly related to the large temporal variability in local precipitation time series, but also shortcomings in the models with simulating processes related to precipitation."

And:

I am not too surprised that there is disagreement for the 20th century as there is a strong component of random variability evident in the observational record. The picture of the “wet getting wetter and the dry getting drier” is one that is very likely to emerge over the course of this century but has not been evident, or expected, during the 20th century.

And:

If this paper’s conclusion about model overprediction holds up to further scrutiny it will be extremely interesting; my own work focuses on model-data discrepancies so I am particularly interested.  But due to the above aspects of the study, I am not convinced that this particular conclusion will hold up.  We shall see, as I am sure this result will attract lots of attention."

So the study is not at all as risible as Romm claims.  It is just one indication of what is going on.


Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries

Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist et al.

Accurate modelling and prediction of the local to continental-scale hydroclimate response to global warming is essential given the strong impact of hydroclimate on ecosystem functioning, crop yields, water resources, and economic security1, 2, 3, 4. However, uncertainty in hydroclimate projections remains large5, 6, 7, in part due to the short length of instrumental measurements available with which to assess climate models. Here we present a spatial reconstruction of hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries across the Northern Hemisphere derived from a network of 196 at least millennium-long proxy records. We use this reconstruction to place recent hydrological changes8, 9 and future precipitation scenarios7, 10, 11 in a long-term context of spatially resolved and temporally persistent hydroclimate patterns. We find a larger percentage of land area with relatively wetter conditions in the ninth to eleventh and the twentieth centuries, whereas drier conditions are more widespread between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Our reconstruction reveals that prominent seesaw patterns of alternating moisture regimes observed in instrumental data12, 13, 14 across the Mediterranean, western USA, and China have operated consistently over the past twelve centuries. Using an updated compilation of 128 temperature proxy records15, we assess the relationship between the reconstructed centennial-scale Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate and temperature variability. Even though dry and wet conditions occurred over extensive areas under both warm and cold climate regimes, a statistically significant co-variability of hydroclimate and temperature is evident for particular regions. We compare the reconstructed hydroclimate anomalies with coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model simulations and find reasonable agreement during pre-industrial times. However, the intensification of the twentieth-century-mean hydroclimate anomalies in the simulations, as compared to previous centuries, is not supported by our new multi-proxy reconstruction. This finding suggests that much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately, and highlights the importance of using palaeoclimate data to place recent and predicted hydroclimate changes in a millennium-long context16, 17.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Newlywed High School Teacher Victimized 16-Year-Old Male



The latest female teacher busted for allegedly traumatizing a teenage male student with sex is Sara Domres.

Domres, 28, faces criminal charges for having sex with a 16-year-old male student in a room at a Motel 6 — on the very same day her husband was having his bachelor party — and, on another occasion, in her car in a Park ‘n Ride lot.

The former English teacher paid $56.54 — cash — for the Motel 6 room, according to Milwaukee ABC affiliate WISN-TV.

Police determined that the teen had connected his mobile phone to the wireless connection at the “bare bones,” “no frills” Motel 6 while Domres was registered.

Domres, who was recently sacked from her job at New Berlin West High School in the suburbs of Milwaukee, also sent her young paramour selfies while she and her husband were enjoying their honeymoon, reports Milwaukee Fox affiliate WITI-TV.

The teen had been a student in one of Domres’s classes during the 2014-2015 school year.

The fling between Domres and her unidentified 16-year-old beau began — as such flings often do these days — with a series of increasingly passionate texts, investigators say.

Investigators collected a slew of texts from the teacher’s phone. The texts indicate that Domres and the student called each other “baby boo.” A sampling of texts excitedly reads “You’re extremely attractive to me!!!” and “I love you!”

The teen told police that the doomed romance also included a scene in a local restaurant parking lot when Domres’s husband found the teacher and the student together.

School officials caught wind of the illicit affair in January and placed Domres on administrative leave. The same month, Domres was fired, according to WITI-TV.

Domres, who has held a Wisconsin teaching license since 2011, pleaded not guilty this week to two counts of sexual assault of a student. She faces a maximum of 6 years in prison for each count as well as total fines of up to $20,000. A judge set her bond at $1,000.

SOURCE

 The psychology of prejudice

At least since 1950, psychologists have been associating prejudice with mental problems.  You are allegedly maladjusted if you are prejudiced about anything.  Although I sometimes do, I have a strong prejudice against driving through a red light.  Does that make me prejudiced?  I think it is apparent that not all pre-judging is bad and may even be wise on occasions.  So their psychologizing of prejudice has always been uphill for them and mostly now seems to have been abandoned.  For some decades now, many psychologists have accepted it as normal.

So I was interested to look at an encyclopedic account of what we now know about prejudice -- one published in a book called The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, in 2012.

The article was written by two very experienced researchers in the field --  Cohrs and Duckitt  -- and is generally moderate and cautious, as an encyclopedic article should be.

But because there is clearly "good" prejudice (such as opposition to the KKK) as well as "bad" prejudice, the authors soon hit a rock.  They recognize that value judgments intrude at that point.  Rather heroically, however, they avoid value judgments and define prejudice simply as a "negative attitude".  I hate to do this to two earnest people but my background in analytical philosophy immediately makes me get critical about that.  The definition overlooks the time element in prejudice.  It is something you do before you do something else.  For instance, I certainly have a negative attitude to ill health but does that mean I am prejudiced against ill health?  We are in deep waters there, I think.

But let me be indulgent and overlook that. I am pleased that they agree with something that has repeatedly emerged in my own research:  "Thus, while tendencies to favor and identify with one’s  own group may be universal, intergroup prejudice is not a universal consequence".  In other words, you can be patriotic without being a racist.

So is there a prejudiced personality?  Is the prejudiced person rigid, intolerant of ambiguity, lacking in openness and all that old guff?  Cohrs and Duckitt reject all that and say that there are only two real predictors of prejudice:  SDO and RWA.  Which is quite hilarious.

The SDO scale CONTAINS expressions of group prejudice so it is no wonder that it predicts it!  In statistician's terms, the correlations are artifactual.  I am disappointed in John Duckitt for not knowing that.  I am pretty sure I have pointed that out to him in the past.   In 2003 I put online  some fuller comments on the SDO scale.  It is a mess.

And as for the RWA (Right-wing Authoritarianism) scale, who knows what it measures?  In Russia the people who get the highest scores on it are former Communists, so it certainly is not a measure of anything Right-wing.  Our present authors describe it as measuring "a combination of traditionalism, support for authorities, and favoring coercive social control".

That's probably as good a description as any but it makes the RWA scale sound very Leftish.  Who are they who ignore the obvious facts and rely on appeals to authority to justify their belief in global warming?  It sure isn't conservatives.  And if you want to hear the conservative attitude to authority, just listen to GOP hero Donald Trump.  He rubbishes all the main authorities: The Congress, the political party organizations, the Supreme Court, the President, big business.  He trusts only the people, which is exactly right in a democracy.

Marxists have often talked about "the people" but have never represented them.  Trump does.  From Marx and Engels on, Marxists have always been low wattage bourgeois intellectuals  -- confirmed ivory tower denizens.

And as for coercive social control, who is it who wanted to "fundamentally transform" America?  Hint: His surname begins with an O.   So it is a type of Leftism  that engenders racism?  It fits.  Aside from the Muslims, all the antisemitism in both Britain and America today is coming from the Left -- particularly in Britain.  And Hitler was a socialist.

Cohrs & Duckitt did not draw that inference, however, perhaps due to a general political naivety.  There also seems to be an underlying political naivety in this statement:

"Simply categorizing people as members of one’s own social category or as members of another social category seems to automatically generate identification with one’s group and a motivational tendency to positively differentiate it from other groups"

So you are always positive towards your own group?  Hardly. Many  American Leftists HATE America and lots of Jews are very negative about Israel.  Even Leftist Israelis are very critical of Israel.

I think Cohrs and Duckitt need to get out into the fresh air a lot more.  There's a different world out there

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Middle School Teacher Traumatized 14-Year-Old Male Student With Naked Selfies



This week’s female teacher busted for using Snapchat to send nude selfies to a 14-year-old male teenager is Kylie Rexann Modisette. Modisette, 28, is an English teacher in the single middle school in the small town of Huntington, Texas, reports area ABC affiliate KTRE.

The flurry of raunchy sexting occurred back in December, law enforcement officials say. Modisette knows the unidentified 14-year-old boy because he was previously a student in one of her classes at Huntington Middle School.

The teenager told Texas Ranger Travis Brazil that he had successfully deleted the nude photos of Modisette from his mobile phone.

However, the teen swore, someone else had taken a screenshot of a photo of Modisette posing in her birthday suit. That image was subsequently distributed widely among youngsters in Huntington

An arrest affidavit says that school district officials contacted the Texas Ranger Division earlier this month with information about the Snapchat photos.

School officials have not fired Modisette. Huntington school district superintendent David Flowers told the New York Daily News that the English teacher is currently on administrative leave pending further investigation. Typically, administrative leave is paid.

Modisette, who has been employed by the school district for a little over 3 years, faces a misdemeanor charge of distributing harmful material to a minor. She was arrested on Thursday and then released after posting $1,500 bail.

SOURCE

Ohio woman posts bond after unlawful sexual conduct with a minor charges

A judge ordered bond for a Licking County woman to be set at $75,000 cash surety Wednesday on a charge of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.  Michelle Lynn Moore, 37, of Etna was arrested Tuesday by Licking County Sheriff’s deputies. She has since posted bond.

According to a report from the Sheriff’s Office, a 14-year-old boy made a complaint on January 31.

Moore appeared via video Wednesday as she was arraigned in a Licking County courtroom. In addition to setting bond, the judge ordered her to have no contact with the alleged victim, or unsupervised contact with anyone younger than 18 years old.

NBC4 obtained Moore’s personnel record from Southwest Licking Local School District, where she worked part-time as a substitute teacher’s aide and in other substitute positions.

Superintendent Bob Jennell said Moore’s background check came back clean when she was hired. She worked for the district for a little more than a year. Jennell said she last worked for the district in January.

“When somebody is out on leave for a particular reason—vacation, sick day, something like that—[she] among others in the sub pool are contacted to fill a position for a particular day,” Jennell said.

Jennell said Moore’s contract would not be renewed and that she would no longer work for the district. “It’s frustrating that we’re here for kids and something like this would happen,” Jennell said.

Christopher Reamer, first assistant prosecutor for Licking County, said Wednesday that none of the alleged incidents happened on school property.

The Licking County Sheriff’s Office said Moore admitted to having sexual intercourse with the juvenile in several different locations.  NBC4 reached out to Moore Tuesday, but she did not want to be interviewed.

Reamer said more charges could be filed against Moore, in connection with the same alleged victim.

“There was a relationship between the two families,” Reamer said. “The children were acquaintances and that was how they grew to know each other.”

Reamer said unlawful sexual conduct with a minor is a third-degree felony, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison.

SOURCE

Leftist Pollyanna-ism:  "The Boston Globe" as "Pravda"

Leftists always claim to do good.  So they have a strong motivation to assert that they actually achieve that.  And they most certainly wish to avoid acknowledging that there is anything wrong with what they do. That is why they try their damnedest to shut conservatives up -- because conservatives have this pesky attachment to reality.

So when Leftists gain control of a place, they tend to become Pollyannas, though not in the same sense as the original Pollyanna, who was a marvellous triumph of the human spirit. They become Pollyannas in the sense of refusing to see anything bad or faulty in their domain, their Reich.  For instance, Soviet newspapers such as  "Pravda" reported mostly good news, even if it was only a tractor factory fulfilling its quotas.

Most notable in the Communist countries of the last century was a failure to report airliner crashes if such reports could be avoided.  Though pesky American satellites often revealed the truth.  And it was the same in China.  And in both countries the result was the same.  In the absence of any public uproar about the negligence or inefficiency that had led to the crashes, nothing was fixed and there were a lot of crashes, far more than happened in the West.  It ended up with crashed Ilyushins scattered throughout Eurasia. The Ilyushin design bureau turned out very robust aircraft but Soviet maintenance was abysmal. If Soviet tank armies had ever surged Westward, most of them would probably have broken down.

So it's amusing that The Boston Globe reads rather like Pravda.  With Massachusetts having been under solid Democrat control for almost forever, anything that happens in Massachusetts is on the Democrat tab.  They are responsible for it so they have to wear it.  You could blame a lot on George Bush for a while but the age of Obama has pretty well nixed that.

But America is alive with all sorts of news media so you can't really hush much up for long.  So how does the Globe handle news about bad things happening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?  They mention it but downplay it and never mention it again if they can help it. They are Pollyannas.  Political problems are treated as minor or under control.  There is no raging at them or swingeing denunciations of them.  It is all "nice".  Rage is reserved for what happens in other parts of the USA, with Donald Trump being a Godsend for that at the moment -- as their recent much-noted front-page shows.

The Globe became one of my regular reads last year so it took me a while to "get" why the paper seemed so different.  But I can now encapsulate the difference.  It has a very "sunny" outlook.  All Massachusetts problems are small or under control. And when they can't avoid mentioning Pachyderms in rooms -- such as the abject failure of Romneycare -- they cover it in such a long-winded way  that it's hard to see the wood for the trees.  And all the detail tends to create the impression that the problem is being worked on.

There are many ways of lying and the Left have mastered them all.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

OH: Oxford woman pleads guilty in teen sex case



An Oxford woman charged with allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old boy while she was a counselor at a Butler County youth home has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge.

Jillian Yvonne Walker, 31, of the 5000 block of College Corner Pike, was indicted in February by a Butler County grand jury for sexual battery, a third-degree felony, involving a teen boy.

Walker, who as a resident counselor at Bunker Hill Haven for Boys on Garner Road in Hanover Twp., was accused of engaging in sexual conduct with the teen between Oct. 28 and Nov. 1, according to the indictment.

On Tuesday, Walker pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Butler County Common Pleas Judge Michael Oster set sentencing for May 15. The charge carries a maximum of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The sexual conduct allegedly occurred once at Walker’s residence and once at the youth home, according to Butler County prosecutors.

The relationship was consensual, but Walker was charged because of her position at the youth home.

Walker was employed by Bunker Hill Haven as a resident counselor from Aug. 31 to Nov. 4, when she was terminated, according to a prepared statement released by the youth home after her indictment.

“She was terminated on November 4, 2015, the day we first learned of any allegation against her,” a statement from Lori Turner, Bunker Hill director, and Trustee Greg Hull said.

SOURCE  

A description of a Trump rally from the Left

Michael A. Cohen's report below is mostly about his own feelings -- things FELT "venomous, violent, terrifying" etc. And we also get theories about what motivates Trump supporters. We read about "feeling of fear, anxiety and paranoia that are so evident at his rallies".  But how does he know what people are feeling?  It's just his opinion.  One could equally say that the feelings were of excitement and happiness.  It is an amusing example of the constant Leftist refrain that conservatives are not right in the head -- even though, from the French revolution on,  it is Leftists who have been the psychopathic  mass murderers. But the report does include some genuine reporting. You do get a picture of a very enthusiastic crowd.

As I walked into a soundstage Wednesday night at Grumman Studios, which was filled with thousands upon thousands of Donald Trump supporters penned into metal barricades and donning all manner of Trump paraphernalia, I immediately thought of the words Richard Strout of The New Republic used more than four decades ago to describe the scene at a George Wallace rally during the 1968 presidential campaign.

“There is menace in the blood shout of the crowd,” wrote Strout. “You feel you have known this all somewhere. Never again will you read about Berlin in the ’30s without remembering this wild confrontation here of two irrational forces. The American sickness has finally localized; Wallace is the ablest demagogue of our time.”

The analogy to Germany in the 1930s is, to be sure, inexact. But the atmosphere in Bethpage was unlike anything I’ve seen at a political rally. There was an electricity and energy in the room that felt venomous, violent, terrifying — like the political equivalent of parched kindling before a conflagration. If Trump had told the throngs there to go rampage in the streets, I half think most of them would have complied.

The crowd was almost all white, overwhelmingly male, and disproportionately young. There were constant chants of “USA! USA! USA!,” “Hillary for prison!,” and “Build the wall!” When protesters raised their voices they were drowned out by a particular chant, more regularly heard at football games, that resounded across the hall. “I’d like to tell them they’re going to be on the southern side of the wall,” said one woman about the protesters. Trump’s omnipresent security guards, many of whom looked like they’d overdosed on muscle mass supplements, soon escorted them out. Thankfully, most of the hecklers who are usually a mainstay at Trump events stayed home or perhaps thought better of riling up the crowd.

A smiling old man proudly displayed to me a T-shirt that read “Trump: Get On Board or Get Run Over.” Another read: “Up Yours Hillary.” When I asked the man to pose for a picture, his wife pulled me over and told me “everything in America is terrible” — the economy, health care, the military. “Don’t you worry about your kids future?” she asked me as she demanded to know if I was voting for Trump.

At other Trump events, there is occasionally concern expressed over some of his more inflammatory statements. Not here. “Trump speaks the truth,” ‘Trump is going to fix things,” they told me. “He’s the only person who can beat Hillary,” said another. One man I talked to so frequently parroted Trump’s catchphrases about getting rid of all the “bad deals” signed by stupid politicians and the foreign countries “ripping us off” that he joked“maybe I should be working for the campaign.” If there was doubt about Trump or fear that perhaps he’s pushing the envelope too far it wasn’t evident in Long Island.

Indeed, the more aggressive that Trump was in his comments, the more the crowd responded. When he said “We’re gonna kick the hell out of ISIS,” the ovation was deafening. When he made his obligatory attack on the media for being “terrible people” the crowd reacted on cue, turning toward the press risers and screaming at us or pointing fingers. And when he asked who is going to pay for the wall he wants to build, the crowd yelled back, “Mexico” and then soon began another chant of “Build the wall!”

Trump’s stump speech was the same he’s now delivered countless times — a litany of complaints about stupid politicians who “don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” journalists who don’t tell the truth about the size of Trump’s rallies, heartless corporations who ship jobs overseas (which won’t happen anymore when Trump takes office), and America’s inability to win anymore. “We don’t fight like people from Long Island,” he said when talking about the war against ISIS.

There were the obligatory attacks on Obama, Clinton, and Lyin’ Ted Cruz. And of course, there was the usual Trump bombast about how he’s “gonna turn this country around so fast” and how voters love him. “The Christians like Trump,” he said bragging about his support with evangelicals.

There was even Trump’s now regular reading of “The Snake,” an Oscar Brown song (Trump still incorrectly says it was written by Al Green) that tells the story of a “tender-hearted woman” who saves a snake’s life only to have it bite and kill her. This is Trump’s explanation for why the United States can’t allow Muslim refugees into America.

It’s a fitting ditty for Trump to read because it sums up well the feeling of fear, anxiety and paranoia that are so evident at his rallies. Even when he tries to say something aspirational and talks about how those in attendance will look back in a few years on this “great evening” with fondness, he falls back into his usual rhetoric. “For the first time we heard someone say that we’re not going to be a scapegoat and stupid people anymore,” said Trump. “We’re not going to allow the world to rip us off anymore. . . . America first! America first!”

There’s no poetry at Trump’s events, no higher calling, no challenge other than to vote for Trump, no invocation of the “better angels of our nature” — it’s just raw aggression, an animal, nationalistic spirit, us vs. them, zero sum game resentment politics. But then again, there isn’t much indication Trump’s supporters are looking to be uplifted. “Everything is terrible,” the country is “falling apart,” and someone needs to come in a fix it. For them, that man is Donald Trump . . . the ablest demagogue of our time.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

New Haven magnet school teacher charged with sexual assault of student



A magnet school teacher was arrested and charged with second-degree sexual assault Wednesday following allegations made by a student, the city said.

Kirvanna Jones, a math teacher at Engineering and Science University Magnet Middle and High School, a New Haven public school located in Hamden, also is charged with risk of injury to a minor, according to a press release from the city. School officials said Feb. 4 that a teacher had been placed on administrative leave following allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries said in a written statement Wednesday that he was notified of the arrest earlier in the day. He confirmed that Jones was the teacher placed on administrative leave last week.

“The (arrest) warrant includes very serious allegations that, if true, break the fundamental trust and professional responsibility carried by every educator,” Harries said in the statement. “My primary and immediate concern remains, however, the well-being of students. The district has deployed resources to support the entire ESUMS community and continues to monitor the school closely.”

Harries said the teacher is entitled to a presumption of innocence and due process. Jones will remain out of the school on paid leave as required by law, Harries said.

“The NHPS investigation will follow that of the police department, gathering the relevant evidence and then determining the next steps,” Harries said.

New Haven police said last week that they were investigating the allegations, but the teacher’s name was not released because she had not been charged. The investigation was prompted when a student at ESUMS reported “unprofessional conduct by a teacher” involving another student, according to the release.

An arrest warrant for Jones was obtained Wednesday after an investigation led by the New Haven Special Victims Unit, or SVU.

“The investigation to date has revealed no evidence to indicate that any other students or teachers are involved in the alleged misconduct,” the city release said. “The (New Haven Police Department) commends lead investigator Detective Shana Kendall and the detectives and supervisors of the SVU for their effective pursuit of this investigation. It also thanks the Board of Education and its staff for its cooperation throughout this investigation.”

Jones had been a teacher at ESUMS since August 2014. According to her biography on the school’s website, Jones is a New Haven native who attended New Haven Public Schools. She attended the University of Hartford from 2010 to 2014, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics. She taught algebra and geometry at ESUMS and tutored at the New Haven Adult Education Center.

Jones was being held in lieu of $75,000 bail. A court date was not listed.

SOURCE  

Hidden cost of climate change is unwanted carb boost in food

I am no botanist, though it was my favorite High School subject, but I know enough to suspect some very dubious botany below. I have already pointed out the flaw in the story about plant stomata and I can't help laughing about the alleged perils to food plants of a slightly raised level of atmospheric CO2.

Why?  Because if it really were a hazard we should all be dead.  And why is that?  Because a lot of our vegetables these days are grown in greenhouses.  And what is the first thing a greenhouse owner does to boost his crops?  He pumps the CO2 level in them up to around 1,000 ppm, more than double what is in the outside air.  Yet somehow our health seems to have survived that awful "threat"!  Warmists do talk an incredible amount of shit.  It gets very wearing after a while

And for decades we were told by the health freaks that carbs were good and fats were bad.  The balance of opinion now seems to be the exact opposite of that but who knows the truth of it?  The various instances of people living happily on very limited diets suggest that the human body is very flexible and forgiving in what it needs to maintain health

And I am not even happy with the first sentence below.  The increase in CO2 levels halted completely last year.  Did all our factories close down for the year or is the increase in CO2 mostly natural?  Proxy studies into the remote past certainly show great natural variations in CO2 levels and even today CO2 emissions vary seasonally

Is that enough skepticism for now?

UPDATE:  My suspicions about bad botany were right. We read here that "Low protein in cereal grains is indicative of poor nitrogen supply to the grain during the grain fill period".  CO2 is not even mentioned.  Did I mention that Warmists talk an incredible amount of shit?


WE ARE undoubtedly pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the air. But did you know that this also silently adds unwanted carbs to bread, cereals and salad and cuts vital protein and mineral content?

This nutritional blow is now worrying the world’s most powerful nation. For the first time it forms a key finding in an official report on the health impacts of climate change in the US, drawn up by the Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and unveiled by the White House this week.

Why would more CO2 mean poorer food? Photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, are the carbohydrate factories of the world. They convert CO2 and water into gigatonnes of starch and sugars every year. And every year since the industrial age began, we have steadily fed them more CO2.

Plants respond by building more carbohydrates but less protein into tissues. This means a higher ratio of carbs to protein in plants, including key crops such as wheat, rice and potato. This is a double whammy: protein deficiency afflicts the developing world, while excess carbohydrate consumption is a worry in the obesity-riven developed world.

This is not the only nutritional impact. To capture CO2, plants open pores in their leaves. These stomata let in CO2 but allow water out: plants compensate by sucking moisture from the soil. Transpiration, as this process is called, is a major hydrological force. It moves minerals essential for life closer to the roots, nourishing plants and ultimately us. But plants respond to high CO2 by partially closing stomata and losing less water. This reduces the flow of nutrients to roots and into plants. Less minerals but more carbs creates a higher carbs-to-minerals ratio in crops and food.

In an elevated CO2 world, every serving of bread, pasta, fruits and vegetables delivers more starch and sugar but less calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, protein and other vital nutrients. Over a lifetime, this change can contribute to weight gain.

Hidden hunger – the result of diets rich in calories but poor in vital nutrients – was mainly a developing world problem. But in 2002, New Scientist predicted that “elevated CO2 levels threaten to bring the… problem to Europe and North America”. Scepticism made it difficult to secure funding for testing this prediction and slowed progress by a decade.

However, the conclusion is now unequivocal: rising CO2 depletes protein and minerals in most food that underpins human nutrition across the world.

Sceptics like to claim that rising CO2 is a boon because it boosts crop yields. But as US Department of Agriculture scientist Lewis Ziska put it “elevated CO2 could be junk food” for some plant species.

There really is no such thing as a free lunch with climate change.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Credentialism is alive and well in Australia

The value assigned to more and more education is a great folly.  Jobs that were once done perfectly well by a high school graduate now mainly go to university graduates.  Teaching is a good example.  You mostly now have to have a 4-year teaching degree to become a teacher.  Yet for two years I successfully taught senior High School geography even though my highest qualification for it was junior High School geography.  I just kept a chapter ahead in our geography book.

As the ups and downs of the mining boom stole the headlines Australia was experiencing a less celebrated economic transformation: a know-how boom.

Since the middle of last decade the share of adults with an advanced post-school qualification has swelled dramatically.

In 2005 the proportion of Australians aged between 20 and 64 with a Certificate III qualification or higher has jumped from 47 per cent to 60 per cent (Certificate III level recognises advanced technical skills and knowledge, such as a tradesman). In that period the share of 20- to 64-year-olds with a bachelor degree or higher has climbed from about 21 per cent to nearly 30 per cent.

The trend for school students to stay in class longer is similar. Over the past decade the national year 12 student retention rate has climbed from 74.7 per cent to 87 per cent.

Government policies have played a role in boosting the number of adults with university degrees and technical qualifications but the main driver towards obtaining those qualifications is a perception among individuals that know-how has become a modern necessity. It's a reflection of a momentous economic shift towards knowledge-based employment. Those with higher qualifications are more likely to be employed, to earn more when they are employed, to increase the productivity of their co-workers, to increase innovation and technical change and increase employers' profits.

The proportion of adults with a higher qualification is set to keep rising.

That's good news, overall. But the know-how boom has also exacerbated a hazardous political fault line.

Despite all those new qualifications, a big portion of voters still have little or no post-school education. And that leaves them increasingly vulnerable to economic change.

Employment in high-skill, high-value knowledge industries has tended to grow more quickly than other sectors, especially in big cities. Low-skill workers are likely to face growing competition from new migrants, offshoring and even robots.

"It's pretty Darwinian out there in the labour market these days," says Dr Nicholas Gruen, the economist who authors the Wellbeing Index. "If you don't have a post-school qualification the odds are stacked against you."

That's an obvious recipe for discontent. You don't have to look far to see the strife this growing educational-cultural divide can fuel.

In the US, Donald Trump's unsavoury campaign for President has been underpinned by poorly educated voters angry about how society is changing. His candidacy has exposed a deep fissure in US politics: class and education. Analysts note that the single best predictor of support for Trump during the Republican Party primaries has been the absence of a college degree.

In Britain, the educational-cultural divide is a factor in the campaign to exit the European Union, known as "Brexit.

The Economist magazine points out those without tertiary qualifications are much more likely to favour "Brexit" than graduates. It argues that "Britain's great European divide is really about education and class". Britain is scheduled to hold a referendum in June asking voters whether they want Britain to remain in the 28-nation economic block. The latest opinion polls show the "Leave Europe" camp with a solid lead.

Should Britain vote to leave the EU the uncertainty would shake global financial markets and probably take a toll on the global economy.

Australian politics isn't plagued by Trumpism or Brexit but it would be folly to assume politics here is immune to the educational-cultural divisions on show in English-speaking democracies with whom we often compare ourselves.

"It's a big new divide all right," says Gruen. "We've seen it before with Pauline Hanson and to some extent the National Party. It's a pretty toxic situation."

The know-how gap in Australia looms as a significant economic and political challenge. That should shine the spotlight on the effectiveness of our education systems: from early childhood through to universities.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

An amusingly projective attempt to psychologize climate skeptics

Salty Jim from UCLA thinks AGW could not possibly be wrong so there must be something wrong in the heads of those who disbelieve.  He is one of many preachers of that gospel but see what his particular explanation is.  He says that we skeptics would be social outcasts if we accepted AGW.  It has apparently not occurred to him that exactly that situation applies to himself.  How long would he last at UCLA if he became a skeptic?

Seeing your own faults and problems in others is as old as the hills.  Sigmund Freud called it "projection" and identified it as maladjusted.  Take a bow, Salty Jim.

James Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law with joint appointments at the UCLA School of Law and at the Bren School of the Environment.  "Salz" is Yiddish for salt


As Dan Kahan, a Yale professor who has long studied risk perception, puts it, people’s beliefs about climate change reflect not what they know but who they are. As he describes,

“Social-science research indicates that people with different cultural values — individualists compared with egalitarians, for example — disagree sharply about how serious a threat climate change is. People with different values draw different inferences from the same evidence. Present them with a PhD scientist who is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, for example, and they will disagree on whether he really is an ‘expert’, depending on whether his view matches the dominant view of their cultural group.”

So why does this happen? “What an ordinary individual believes about the ‘facts’ on climate change has no impact on the climate. What he or she does as a consumer, as a voter, or as a participant in public debate is just too inconsequential to have an impact… But if he or she takes the ‘wrong’ position in relation to his or her cultural group, the result could be devastating for her, given what climate change now signifies about one’s membership in and loyalty to opposing cultural groups. It could drive a wedge—material, emotional, and psychological—between the individual people whose support are indispensable to his or her well-being.

“In these circumstances, we should expect a rational person to engage information in a manner geared to forming and persisting in positions that are dominant within their cultural groups. And the better they are at making sense of complex information—the more science comprehending they are – the better they’ll do at that.”

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has made a similar argument about how cultural priors shape our acceptance and interpretation of facts.

There may well be other explanations, and I’m eager to hear suggestions, but I think that Kahan and Haidt are both on to something that explains the views of many climate skeptics. It certainly seems that for part of the Republican party climate skepticism has become a proxy for membership. The challenge lies in how to disentangle one’s position on climate change from one’s cultural identity or sense of well-being.

In my view, this is the area with the greatest potential for engaging with skeptics and will require thoughtful re-framing of the climate debate. This is already happening to some extent, with the discussion shifting to energy security, green jobs, and strengthening community resilience. Things people from all ideological stripes can agree on.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

UK: Blackpool woman, 36, denies threesome with underage boys



A 36-year-old mother took part in a threesome with a 15-year-old boy and his young friend, a court has heard.

Caroline Lea is also alleged to have slept with another 15-year-old boy who thought he was in a relationship with her and is said to have sexually touched a third boy of the same age.

Lea, from Blackpool, Lancashire, denies seven counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child as she went on trial at Preston Crown Court.

Jurors were told the alleged offences took place against a backdrop of her allowing young boys to smoke cannabis and drink alcohol at her then home in the resort.

One of the complainants told police his friend suggested “a three-way” with the defendant and then it “just happened”.

He described how the trio went to the upstairs bedroom of Lea, who then laid on the bed wearing shorts and a vest top.

As the then 15-year-old and his friend sat on her settee for five minutes, he said Lea told them: “Come on boys, I thought you knew what you were doing.”

His friend began kissing her before he joined in as Lea performed oral sex on them both and also had full intercourse with them, the court heard.

Francis McEntee, prosecuting, said the second 15-year-old complainant believed he was in a relationship with the defendant, who is the mother of three sons.

The third complainant, also aged 15, was said to have visited the defendant’s home on a regular basis to smoke cannabis.

He said the defendant “tried it on” with him on her settee while he was “really off his head”.

Wearing just knickers and a T-shirt the defendant rubbed against him and “made it clear she fancied him”, he claimed.

Mr McEntee told the jury: “The complainants and other youths would go to the address and, the prosecution would say, would be permitted to smoke drugs and drink alcohol.

“The prosecution case is that the defendant’s address became something of a dosshouse for young lads.”

He said that police had issued a child abduction notice to the defendant regarding one of the complainants and as a result he was not permitted to stay at her house.

When arrested and interviewed over the sexual allegations, Lea dismissed the threesome claim as “nonsense” and said the second complainant was “infatuated” with her and suggested he was “a little bit not right”.

Lea, of Clifton Drive, Blackpool, denies committing any of the sexual offences said to have taken place on various dates between December 2013 and March 2014.

She has also pleaded not guilty to one count of allowing her home to be used for smoking cannabis and a separate count of supplying a quantity of amphetamines, a Class B drug, to another.

SOURCE  

"Last Month Was The Hottest March In The Global Satellite Record, And The Arctic Is Still Sizzling"

So says professional Warmist JOE ROMM below, quite ignoring the fact that the warming was ENTIRELY due to natural factors such as El Nino. So let us have a look at that "sizzling" Arctic.  The picture below is from Summit Station in the middle of Greenland, where the temperature at the time of writing was 34 degrees Celsius BELOW zero.  Very strange sizzling!  Exaggeration is very common among liars.  They even claim that 97% of scientists agree with them.  Why not 100%?  Whoops!  Oreskes made that claim too



Last month was the hottest March on record, according to newly-released satellite data. And it followed the hottest February on record. The Arctic was literally off-the-charts warm last month, as we’ll see. It’s no surprise, then, that Arctic sea ice set a record for the lowest maximum extent.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

An Authoritarian-in-chief?

Jeff Jacoby below is one of many who say that Trump is not fit for the Presidency.  He makes a more thorough than usual case for that so I thought I might offer a few comments on the matter.  

For a start, his referral to Trump as a potential authoritarian is amusing.  What could be more authoritarian than a man who wants to "fundamentally transform" America?  And the Leftist hegemony in America today goes right down to the children. Offering schoolchildren food they like in school meals is forbidden. And there are regulations for almost everything.  You cannot have an efficient dishwasher or an efficient toilet flush.  Americans already live under a pervasive authoritarianism.

Does Trump propose anything of that magnitude?  Not that I have heard.  He might be abusive to political opponents but he would be hard put to be as abusive as Leftists are to Christians and conservatives.

Jeff also fails to see two big things that stick out like dog's balls (if I may use an army expression):  That Trump is a showman and that Trump is an astute businessman.  And you do not get to be astute in business without being astute elsewhere.

So most of what Jeff objects to below is in fact just showmanship. Trump has been on TV almost forever, after all, so he knows plenty about showmanship. What he offers is entertaining bluster. He is a cartoon bully.  Trump has invented a very successful shtick and stays with it. But the chances of him actually doing anything foolish are very low.  And he does after all have perfectly sensible conservative policies beneath his defiant performances -- opposition to illegal immigration and free trade agreements, as well as his frequently non-interventionist views on foreign policy.

And could Trump be any worse that having a traitor in the White House, which America has at the moment? At least Trump is patriotic


THERE IS a riveting scene in Steven Spielberg's 2012 film "Lincoln" in which the 16th president hotly demands that his aides do whatever it takes — deploy every ounce of leverage available — to obtain the last few votes needed to pass the Thirteenth Amendment.

"I am the President of the United States of America, clothed in immense power!" roars Abraham Lincoln, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. "You will procure me these votes."

The historicity of the quote is doubtful, but Lincoln's determination was not. The presidency does convey immense power, and Lincoln was relentless about deploying that power to achieve his great aim: the abolition of slavery in America.

What would Donald Trump do with such immense power?

Voters should think hard, of course, about the consequences of investing any candidate with the vast influence and clout of the presidency — an office much more formidable today than it was in 1865. Power tends to corrupt. That will be true whether the next president is liberal or conservative, male or female, Republican or Democrat.

But the authoritarian abuse of power in a Trump administration isn't just a theoretical possibility. Should the New York businessman win the presidency, it's a certainty. Trump's campaign, with its torrent of insults, threats of revenge, and undercurrent of political violence, is the first in American history to raise the prospect of a ruthless strongman in the White House, unencumbered by constitutional norms and democratic civilities.

When Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was arrested last week on misdemeanor charges of battery against reporter Michelle Fields, the candidate's reaction was typical. Though Fields's account was never in doubt — it was corroborated at once by an eyewitness (Washington Post reporter Ben Terris), by an audio recording, and then by security-camera video footage — Trump offered no apology and didn't rebuke his staffer. Instead he went on the attack: He claimed that Fields had "made the story up," he went out of his way to praise Lewandowski, and he gleefully trashed the journalists covering him as "disgusting" and "horrible people." Trump even hinted that he might sue Fields.

If this is how the Republican front-runner conducts himself when he is merely a candidate, what would he be like with the whole executive branch of the federal government at his command?

It is normal for passions to run high in election season. We're used to seeing candidates play to their base with animated rhetoric. What isn't normal is for a serious presidential contender, after being heckled by a protester, to tell a campaign rally: "I'd like to punch him in the face." What we're not used to seeing is a candidate who warns that if he fails to win the nomination at a contested convention, blood will flow: "I think you'd have riots," Trump said on CNN. "I think bad things would happen."

Barely-veiled blackmail is a Trump mainstay. The family of Chicago Cubs owner J. Joe Ricketts contributed to an anti-Trump PAC? "They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!" the candidate tweets. An independent group backing Cruz runs an ad featuring Melania Trump in an erotic pose? "Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!" another tweet warns.

Though Trump hasn't been nominated, let alone elected, he already signals that if he becomes president, anyone who opposes him will regret it. That includes House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had the temerity to criticize Trump's evasions about the Ku Klux Klan.

"Paul Ryan? I don't know him well," Trump remarked with a whiff of menace on Super Tuesday, "but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him. And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price."

"You've got to give him credit. . . . He goes in, he takes over, he's the boss. It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. This guy doesn't play games" — Donald Trump's praise for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un

Trump's low-road brawling, thuggish tone, and gutter sexism are something new in American presidential politics. Dangerous demagogues are a species we have tended to associate with banana republics and military dictatorships. The fervent zealotry Trump's backers, the blind cult of personality that surrounds him, is shocking to many of us who always imagined that America was immune to the politics of caudillos and Dear Leaders. Now we know better. For a significant minority of American voters, an authoritarian brute who flirts with violence and has no scruples is just what they've been waiting for.

Imagine the presidency in the hands of such a man.

Trump has heaped praise on Vladimir Putin for being "a strong leader," looked back nostalgically at the bloody reign of Saddam Hussein, and insisted that it "would be so much better" if Moammar Gadhafi still ruled Libya. He has even applauded North Korea's sociopathic Kim Jong-Un for the "incredible" way he murdered his political rivals when he came to power.

Every president wants to get his way, and more than a few have bent some rules to the breaking point in the pursuit of their goals. But Trump holds out the prospect of a president for whom ends will always justify means, however dishonorable or scandalous or undemocratic. For many of his loyalists, nothing he does is beyond the pale; they are as blind to the grossness of his character as they are to the incoherence of his positions.

The rest of us should be thinking hard about what would happen if a man so unfit for leadership were to be clothed in the immense power of the presidency. And thinking even harder about how to prevent it.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

Ontario teacher facing additional sex charges involving minors




Jaclyn McLaren is facing six new charges in addition to the dozens of charges previously laid in relation to sex offences involving young people while she was a teacher.

As of Thursday morning, McLaren has been charged with two additional counts of making sexually explicit material available to a person under 16 and four additional counts of making sexually explicit material available to a person under 18.

She was previously charged with 36 other criminal charges, including four counts of sexual assault on a person under 16, four counts of sexual interference with a person under 16, four counts of invitation to sexual touching, eight counts of sexual exploitation, six counts of luring a person under 16, seven counts of making sexually explicit material available to a person under 16 and three counts of making child pornography.

McLaren's defence lawyer, Pieter Kort, appeared on her behalf for a brief court proceeding in Belleville on Thursday.

During the proceeding, Kort said he had received additional disclosure from Hastings County Crown attorney Lee Burgess regarding the case. Kort said he expects more disclosure -- the sharing of evidence between the Crown and defence -- to come forward in the future.

The disclosure names four additional complainants. A publication ban is in place on the release of information that may identify the complainants. In total, eight young people are involved in the case.

The 36-year-old Stirling woman was initially charged in February. Those charges involved four young people aged 12 to 15 and date from 2013 to 2016. Investigators said the incidents occurred in Tweed, 37 kilometres northeast of Belleville.

During her first court appearance in February, McLaren was freed from custody on a $100,000 bond with strict conditions.

Kerry Donnell, communications officer for the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board, was in court Thursday and said McLaren is not actively working in any local schools at this point.

Last month, OPP officers met with students at local schools in relation to their investigation.

Donnell said the board is conducting its own internal review.  "Generally, when there are any issues with staff, the board does its own investigation as per our process," Donnell said.

She added that while it's "business as usual" at the schools, child and youth workers and counsellors continue to be available "at a moment's notice" for students and staff.

SOURCE

Mauna Loa CO2

The Mauna Loa CO2 record seems to be the one most referred to by Warmists so I have for some time been greatly amused by what it shows for 2015, that "record" year for warming, according to Warmists.  It is so amusing that I think there is a fair chance that it will be "adjusted" -- as the temperature record often has been.  So I have decided to take a screen capture of it while it is in its original state.  See below.



The 4th column is the actual average CO2 level in ppm.  As you can see, the actual CO2 levels just bobbed up and down around 400ppm, showing that CO2 levels plateaued during that year.  There was no overall change.  There were slight increases but also slight decreases.

So it is perfectly clear that this "warmest" year was NOT caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions rising -- because total CO2 levels did not rise.  ALL the warming was due to natural factors, principally El Nino.

Instead of crowing that it proved their theory, Warmists should be in deep despond that this "warmest" year was TOTALLY natural.  CO2 levels did nothing.  Once again, there was no linkage between temperature and CO2 levels.  The facts are totally at odds with Warmism.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

Two married teachers at an Alabama private school are accused of having sexual relations with students

This has been extensively reported but seems unusual.  I note that the date of the news report is April 1



Charli Parker was arrested Monday, and James Franklin Parker was booked in on Wednesday. Charli Parker is accused of having sex with a student at a cemetery.

Charli Parker is a teacher at a private school in western Alabama. So is her husband, James Parker.

On Monday, she was arrested — accused of having sex with a student, the Alabama Media Group reported.

Two days later, her husband was arrested on the same charge, involving a different victim.

James “Jamie” Parker was booked into the Pickens County Jail and charged with engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19 as a school employee, according to District Attorney J. Chris McCool.

Charli Parker also faces accusations of carrying on a sexual relationship with a student, from October 2014 until March 2016, according to court documents.

After the arrests, Jamie and Charli Parker were suspended from their positions at Pickens Academy, according to statements from the school in Carrollton, Ala., not far from the Mississippi border.

“I want to make clear that none of the crimes occurred on campus at [Pickens Academy] and that the administration there has cooperated fully with the investigation,” McCool, the district attorney, said in an email to The Post on Friday.

McCool told The Post that Jamie Parker’s alleged victim is a former female student; Charli Parker’s alleged victim is a male student.

According to court documents, investigators believe Charli Parker and a student met several times for sexual encounters, including at a cemetery.

On Thursday, court officials told the Dispatch, a newspaper in nearby Columbus, Miss., that warrants for Jamie Parker’s case weren’t available yet.

“The incidents involving the husband and wife are separate and unrelated in place and manner of commission,” McCool, the prosecutor, told AL.com.

Charli Parker, 30, taught and coached girls’ basketball at Pickens Academy, the Alabama Media Group reported. Jamie Parker, 32, was also a teacher-coach at the school, according to AL.com.

SOURCE  

Warmist fear of the truth

I won't go into details but I had an email conversation a few weeks ago with a woman whom I had last seen in the '70s.  I had a small item that she wanted so I suggested that she call in to pick it up.  She lives only about 15 minutes drive away so that would be no burden.  And she seemed keen to do that.

As part of polite catching up she asked me about my mathematician son.  One of the things I said was that he was like me in regarding global warming as absurd to the point of hilarity.

Since I had last seen her, however, she had become a global warming believer.  So I said that when she visited I would like to show her a graph.  I had in mind the graph at the head of GREENIE WATCH

We closed the conversation shortly thereafter and I have heard and seen neither hide nor hair of her since.  Her interest in visiting me vanished as soon as she suspected that her beliefs would come under challenge.

And when they can't shut us up, that is what the Green/Left do.  They run away.  They HAVE to feel wiser than the rest of us "cattle" in order to prop up their self-esteem.  ANYTHING is better than feeling small and foolish, which is what they mostly are. So when conservatives present evidence to show that their wisdom is wrong, it is very distressing to them.  They just HAVE to shut all that out.  Sad.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Medford woman accused of sexually abusing boy

OR: A Medford woman has been jailed on charges she sexually abused a boy under age 12 and then threatened him in an effort to prevent him from talking about the alleged abuse.



Misty Star Garcia, 39, of the 600 block of Northwoods Drive, has been charged with first-degree sodomy, tampering with a witness and five counts of first-degree sexual abuse.

She pleaded not guilty to all the charges Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for March 28 in the case.

Prosecutors allege Garcia sexually abused the boy on or between Feb. 1 and Feb. 28, 2015.

On Feb. 19 of this year, she allegedly attempted to induce him to withhold testimony or offer false testimony by threatening him, according to an indictment.

She was lodged in the Jackson County Jail on March 2 and remains there on $1 million bail, jail records show.

Garcia’s criminal history includes convictions for driving under the influence of intoxicants in 2000, 2006 and 2011, according to court records.

SOURCE

A small note: Mike is ill with eye troubles so has been unable to keep up his chronicle of erring ladies. I have decided therefore that I should try to fill the gap to some extent so have put up a few reports of that sort of thing -- until Mike is back on deck. I do however have a lot of other commitments so it would help if people were to send me links to any such reports that they come across... My email is jonjayray@hotmail.com JR

Pa.: Trial begins for Allentown woman, 40, accused of molesting boy, 13


Rachel Warris

Warris, now 40, of the 600 block of Dixon Street in south Allentown is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a person under 16 years old, statutory sexual assault, corruption of minors and indecent assault.

If convicted, Warris could be sentenced to more than 10 years in a state prison.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Warris told the jury that the boy was the aggressor. She said she admitted telling police that she initiated sexual contact with the eighth-grader, but said her confession was coerced. "I just wanted to go home already," she said.

The sex assault is alleged to have occurred Feb. 11, 2015, at Warris' home. The boy told an investigator that Warris touched him inappropriately, took off his pants and sexually assaulted him, according to court records.

The boy's mother testified for more than an hour Tuesday morning. She said her son and Warris' son were close friends, and they usually got together at the Warris home after school to play video games or sports.

On the day of the alleged sex assault, the mother said she picked up her son from the Warris home and noticed a change in his demeanor. Her normally talkative child was quiet, and would not make eye contact with her, she told the jury.

Before the boy left for school the next morning, he gave his mother his prepaid cellphone, so that she could hook it up to the family computer and add minutes to it.

The mother said she was curious when she saw the heart message on her son's phone, but hesitated before clicking it, because she didn't want to invade his privacy. "But I wanted to see who the girl was," she said.

The family then drove to the Allentown Police Department, where the boy was interviewed by members of the Special Victims Unit.

Warris admitted in court Tuesday that she exposed her breast to the boy and her son, but said it was a joke. She also admitted writing sexually explicit messages to the boy, but insisted that she did not invite the sexual contact between them that she described.

During cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Anna-Kristie Morffi Marks showed Warris the Facebook message thread, pointing out that Warris sent the boy an "I love you" cartoon the day after she said the boy tried to sexually assault her.

Warris' attorney, David Ritter, asked jurors to keep an open mind. He said child molester prosecutions are a "machine that must keep cranking on," and suggested that police do not always have proof when they charge someone.

SOURCE  

No matter how warm or cool a year is, it always proves global warming

As we all know, Warmists have seized on the slight warming in 2015 as "proving" Warmism to be right.  El Nino is ignored. So the year 2011 must have been hard for them.  I downloaded the 2011 chart from CRU in 2012.  It is below.  That was only the 12th Warmest year on record.  So did such a dismal figure shake their faith in Warmism at all?  No way!  They went on proclaiming their twisted gospel as before

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

Arctic news

Sea ice was down a bit for most of March but it has now popped back up to a level similar to that in other recent years.  The graph tells all:


2016 is the black line


How awful for the Warmists.  The Arctic is all they've got.  I imagine they will console themselves by saying today is the 15th lowest or some such.  You have to be creative with the truth to be a Warmist -- which mostly means taking refuge in trivialities

SOURCE for the graph


UPDATE:

The following is amusing.  It looks like the upswing began on 25th.

"Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)  said that the sea ice cover attained an average maximum extent of 14.52m sq km (5.607m sq miles) on 24 March, the lowest winter maximum since records began in 1979. The low beats a record set only last year of 14.54m sq km (5.612m sq miles), reached on 25 February 2015".

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Arctic sea ice reaches a record low: Scientists say 'disturbing' data points to a long-term trend in global warming

Arrant nonsense.  Arctic temperatures increased FAR more than global temperatures.  So this is a local effect, not a global one.  It is Arctic-specific with no demonstrable relevance to CO2 emissions or the alleged effects of CO2 emissions. Since CO2 emissions were in fact flat overall in 2015 and into 2016, it is DEMONSTRABLE that they did not cause the Arctic warming. Non-change doesn't cause change.  The warming could have been caused by oscillations in ocean currents, oscillations in air currents or subsurface vulcanism.  Nobody knows


The growth of Arctic sea ice this winter peaked reached another milestone.

It recorded the lowest maximum level of ice on record, thanks to extraordinarily warm temperatures.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center says ice covered a maximum of 5.607 million square miles of the Arctic Ocean in 2016.

That's 5,000 square miles less than the old record set in 2015 — a difference slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

It's also some 431,000 miles less than the 30-year average. That difference is the size of Texas and California combined.

Records go back to 1979 when satellites started measuring sea ice, which forms when Arctic Ocean water freezes.

This year's ice didn't break the record by much, but it's 'an exclamation point' on a longer-term trend, said Nasa scientist Walt Meier, who helped calculate the data.

The sub-par showing doesn't necessarily mean that the minimum extent this summer will also break a record, scientists said.

The summer minimum is more important for affecting Earth's climate and weather.

Data center scientist Julienne Stroeve says winter temperatures over the North Pole were 16 degrees warmer than normal, while other parts of the Arctic ran 4 to 11 degrees warmer than normal.

Data center chief Mark Serreze said: 'I have never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic.' 'It was so warm that the Barents Sea was 'pretty much close to ice -free for almost the whole winter, which is very unusual,' Meier said. Stroeve said early indications show that the sea ice is thinner than last year.

A leading but still controversial theory says loss of sea ice in the Arctic may change the jet stream and bring more extreme weather to the US, Stroeve said.

The new report reveals 'just the latest disturbing data point in a disturbing trend wherein climate changes are happening even faster than we had forecast,' Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said.

However, Nasa adds that the cap of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean is always changing.

Each winter it grows dramatically, usually reaching its maximum in March.It melts just as dramatically each summer, reaching its minimum in September.

In 2015-16, that winter growth got off to a leisurely start due in part to a month of unusually warm weather in the region.

They link this to a phenomenon known as the Arctic Oscillation. This involves differences in air pressure over the Arctic and lower latitudes.

Scientists say a shift in the Arctic Oscillation likely weakened the atmospheric barrier between the polar latitudes and the mid-latitudes

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

British woman started relationship with underage boy after marriage breakdown

A 35-year-old woman from a rural Nottinghamshire village has been jailed for having a sexual relationship with an underage boy.



Lauren Swindin, of Grovewood Road in Misterton, began the relationship with the teenager in 2013, following the breakdown of her marriage.

Police became involved after an anonymous tip-off in early 2014 and Swindin was arrested.  At a previous hearing Swindin pleaded guilty to two counts of engaging in sexual activity with a boy.

She was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday to two years and six months in jail.

She is also subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and is required to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for life.

Sergeant Nathan Thomas from Nottinghamshire Police said: "Swindin manipulated this boy into a sexual relationship, knowing full-well the legal implications of her actions. "She now has two-and-a-half years in prison to reflect on this.

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Fenton woman accused of having sex with teenager



JEFFERSON COUNTY, MO (KTVI) – A 32-year-old Fenton woman is facing multiple felony charges for allegedly carrying on a months-long sexual relationship with a teenager, the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said.

According to a report appearing in The Jefferson County Leader, Randi Benedick, who’s listed as a mental health therapist for Comtrea, had sex with the victim at least 40 times between November 2014 and May 2015. The victim was 16 years-old at the time. She also continued to have sex with the victim after he turned 17.

Prosecutors charged Benedick with five counts of second-degree statutory rape and five counts of second-degree sodomy.

Benedick was released from jail February 18 after posting a $40,000 bond, but she’s been ordered to wear a GPS monitor and cannot go within a mile of the victim’s home. She’s also been forbidden from having any contact with anyone under the age of 18, other than her own children.

Benedick is due back in court April 12. If convicted, she faces up to seven years in prison on each charge.

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A vegan who loves nukes

There is a HUGE rant by Geoff Russell on "New Matilda" about  global warming being caused by farm animals.  It bemuses me to see how many words the Green/Left usually take to make their points and this is an example of that. The article seems to go on forever.  The Green/Left must be boiling with rage to pour out so many bile-filled words.

And despite all those words absolutely nothing is said about how humans have evolved to be omnivores and that any attempt to take meat off our dinner tables would be so widely and strongly resisted as to make the attempt futile. He seems to think it is only a "conspiracy" that keeps us eating meat.  What a wacko!

He also dosn't question global warming orthodoxy but that is unsurprising. It gives him a hook to hang his vegan crusade on.

That he is actually capable of critical thought is revealed by the second oddity about him.  He likes nuclear power.  That's perfectly rational if you believe in the evils of CO2 and CH4 but is rare on the Green/left.

And speaking of CH4, the usual swipe that Warmists take at farm animals is at their farts, which do have a lot of CH4 in them.  But CH4 intercepts warming in certain wavelengths only and water vapour also absorbs those wavelengths so the theoretical effect of CH4 on global warming translates in practice to a nil effect. So that part of Mr Russell's argument is a washout.

It's amusing, though, that Mr Russell aims primarily at fellow Greenies.  He thinks they are conveniently overlooking  a major source of global warming. Just a few excerpts:

The makers of the US eco-ethical-documentary “Cowspiracy” are attempting to explain why the world’s largest environmental organisations have ignored the role of meat in both climate change and more generally in trashing the planet.

They use the well-worn tactic of simply asking them… or trying to. When it comes to slandering people for buggering the planet, Greenpeace apparently thinks it’s more noble to give than to receive, so they aren’t keen on being asked inconvenient questions.

This doco has lots of Michael Moore moments. People knocking on doors, asking pointed questions and getting sheepish looks. All the big US players get a mention: The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, Rainforest Action Network, Amazon Watch, and more.

These groups all love asserting the high moral ground and aren’t used to being questioned about their submersion in a deep trench of cattle excrement.

The inconvenient truth is that none of these environmental icons care enough about their beloved planet to order the vegan option, let alone make the whole menu vegan.

In the case of Greenpeace, their PR people did the old “turn that camera off” shuffle and refused to be interviewed; … priceless!

But after all the fun and games… does Cowspiracy actually explain the inaction of at least the US environmental movement on the meat and dairy industries? Is it really a conspiracy? Is it organised and funded?

US Professor of Nutrition, Marion Nestle blew the whistle years ago with “Food Politics” on how the meat industry stacked and bullied US Government nutritional advice committees.

Cowspiracy lacks Nestle’s academic rigor, but still delivers a few hits.

When asked if the meat and dairy industries donate to environmental organisations, the Animal Agriculture Alliance spokesperson looked like a kid caught with both hands and feet in the cookie jar, and said she couldn’t comment. She refused to answer a direct question about funding Greenpeace.

In Australia, the funding link is clear and a matter of public record. As is the lack of any major campaign against meat by the big green groups (ACF, FOE, AYCC, Greens to name but a few) getting this funding. Tim Flannery is also a recipient of pastoral largess from the bovine broverhood.

Let’s be clear here: different meats have different impacts. It gets tiresome to differentiate constantly, so I’ll do it once now.

Ruminants are the primary climate culprits by way of methane and deforestation, while pigs and chickens primarily pollute air, water and other foods while diverting deforested land from food to feed, while also killing people directly via new diseases (e.g. Swine Flu) while adding to our risk of losing antibiotics.

The cattle barons supporting our big green groups obviously don’t care that their funding is common knowledge. Why? Probably because our mainstream media don’t give a damn. Aussie BBQ culture is at least as strong here as in the US; and don’t forget meat industry advertising.....

Environmental tribalism has our environmental groups automatically anti-GM and anti-nuclear as a matter of ideology. This illustrates a profoundly anti-science bias. They simply don’t get it.

You can’t credibly accept climate science but reject any other science which contradicts your policies. All the science of the last 30 years on the causes of cancer and the mechanism of DNA repair contradict the radiophobia behind green anti-nuclear policy.

When science conflicts with your policy, you may wait a little to make sure the science is solid and well supported, but if it is, then you change your policies. Any high school student can understand this, except perhaps those in AYCC.

When your science is shallow and you don’t really understand the process, you tend to pick and choose what you like. But science isn’t like that.

The human population, even the 9 billion of us expected by 2050, could actually live without doing too much environmental damage if we ate at the bottom of the food chain (vegan) and used nuclear power for all our energy needs.

Energy doesn’t have to have a large adverse footprint on the planet, unless we go with sources having a low power density, like wind, solar and biofuels. It is ironic that our environmental movement has opted for the sources of energy that will have the most impact on wildlife habitat, and therefore biodiversity.

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Fracking, methane and Bill McKibben

Well-known Warmist preacher Bill McKibben has an article out under the heading: "Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry".  He is easily terrified in the hope that we will be too. Like a lot of articles in Leftist publications, it is VERY long-winded.  I sometimes wonder about that.  If they had purely factual statements to make there would surely be no more than a few paragraphs needed.  Readers will note that my posts are very short.  If you know what you are talking about, it doesn't take long to say it.

Anyway, I will not attempt to reproduce any of the huge rant concerned.  The point of the article can indeed be presented with great brevity.  McKibben says that fracking releases methane into the atmosphere and that methane there will soon fry us with global warming.  So he wants to stop fracking!

Such a simple story and so wrong.  It's probably true that atmospheric methane levels have increased as a result of leaks from fracking but does that matter?

No.  It is true that methane can absorb some heat from the electromagnetic radiation that we get from the sun.  And molecule for molecule, it absorbs a lot more heat than does CO2.

Warmists normally stop the discussion there.  But the atmosphere is a complex thing and we have to look at methane in the context of what normally goes on in the whole atmosphere. And it so happens that water vapour absorbs the same wavelengths that methane does.  And there is a heck of a lot more water vapour in the atmosphere than methane.  So the water vapour will already have intercepted most or all of the wavelengths that methane might -- leaving no heating effect due to methane. The effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O.  So methane is a POTENTIAL warming gas but not an ACTUAL one.  No foreseeable increase in methane would generate any increase in warming.

Isn't it strange that in his long article Bill McKibben found no space to discuss that matter?  Just another climate crook.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Former married teacher, 33, found guilty of kidnapping his student, 17, to have sex despite her testimony in his defense



A married teacher was found guilty of kidnapping his 17-year-old student in order to have sex with her.

Jason Lofthouse, 33, of Las Vegas, Nevada was convicted after the jury deliberated for two hours over a statute that forbids an adult from enticing a minor in order to commit an unlawful act against him or her, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

The father of three will now be facing a minimum of 20 years in prison to a maximum of life, according to News 3.

The trial cantered on whether or not Lofthouse forced or coerced the student, who was 17 at the time, to perform sex acts on him in his classroom and have sex with him twice in hotels during school hours, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.

'You can’t use the word ‘consensual’ as a defense, so you just have to go by the law,' Lewis said. 'As a teacher he should have known better.'

But the teenager, now 18, insisted to jurors at Clark County District Court that she wasn’t hoping for a better grade in the class and didn’t even consider her former teacher to be her boyfriend. Describing the relationship as ‘nothing serious’, she told the court: ‘I thought of it more as a thing.  ‘I didn’t need a good grade. I wasn’t trying to get a better grade. I was just doing it because I wanted to.’

She insisted that both she and her teacher initiated physical contact – and that she never felt trapped when they visited two hotels for sex in May last year.

In Nevada, while the age of sexual consent is 16, state law forbids employees and volunteers at schools from engaging in sexual contact with students.

The student told jurors that she did not get her parents’ permission to visit the hotels – which is important in relation to the kidnapping charges it is a first-degree felony to take a minor somewhere without parental permission and commit a crime against the minor.

Lewis and other jurors agreed that the kidnapping statue was 'too broad' and that it should be re-worded despite finding him guilty.

Lofthouse is due back in court for sentencing on May 17.

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