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To: tejek who wrote (858587)	5/19/2015 6:53:32 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1574332

Obama awarded Politifact Lie of the Year

To: tejek who wrote (858587)	5/19/2015 6:59:18 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1574332

Lefty "Science"---More Countries Caught Manipulating Climate Data Michael Bastasch 2:33 PM 05/19/2015 Weather agencies in Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland may be manipulating temperature data to create a sharper warming trend than is present in the raw data — a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent months. Most recently, Dr. H. Sterling Burnett with the Heartland Institute detailed how the Swiss Meteorological Service adjusted its climate data “to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments.” In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made. But even with the data tampering, Sterling noted that “there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering.” “Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists,” according to Sterling. The Swiss affair, however, is not the first instance of data “homogenization” catalogued by scientists and researchers who are skeptical of man-made global warming. In January, skeptic blogger Paul Homewood documented how NASA has “homogenized” temperature data across Paraguay to create a warming trend that doesn’t exist in the raw data. Homewood found that all three operational rural thermometers in Paraguay had been adjusted by NASA to show a warming trend where one did not exist before. Homewood also found that urban thermometers in Paraguay had similarly been adjusted by NASA. “[NASA is] supposed to make a ‘homogenisation adjustment,’ to allow for [urban heat island (UHI)] bias,” Homewood wrote. “The sort of thing you would expect to see at Asuncion Airport, Paraguay’s main gateway, handling over 800,000 passengers a year.” “However, far from increasing historic temperatures to allow for UHI, [NASA] has done the opposite and decreased temperatures prior to 1972 by 0.4C,” Homewood added. Before that, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit it adjusts temperatures recorded at all weather stations across the country. Aussie journalists had been critical of ABM for being secretive about its data adjustments. “Almost all the alterations resulted in higher temperatures being reported for the present and lower numbers for the past–with the higher numbers being used to demonstrate a historical warming trend–than the numbers that were actually recorded,” wrote Sterling. “Downward homogenizations in recent years were rare. In some areas, downward temperature trends measured over time showed a significantly increased temperature trend after homogenization,” he added. “The difference between actually measured temperatures and homogenized temperatures topped 4 degrees Celsius over certain periods at some measuring stations.” Global warming skeptics have increasingly become critical of adjustments to raw temperature data made by government climate agencies. Such adjustments seem to overwhelmingly show a massive warming trend not present in the raw data. Such adjusted data has been used by climate scientists and environmental activists to claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record. Adjusted data also shows that 13 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. NOAA and other climate agencies have defended such adjustments to the temperature record, arguing they are necessary to correct for “biases” that distort the reality of the Earth’s climate. NOAA scientists increase or decrease temperatures to correct for things like changes in the locations of thermometers (some that were once in rural areas are now in the suburbs or even in cities). Scientists have also had to correct for a drastic change in the time of day temperatures were recorded (for whatever reason, past temperatures were recorded in the afternoon, but are now often collected in the morning). Other adjustments have been made to the data to correct for such “biases,” but global warming skeptics question if the scope of the data adjustments are justifiable. The U.K.’s Global Warming Policy Foundation has created a panel of skeptical scientists from around the world who will evaluate temperature adjustments to find out if they are scientifically justified. “Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement. “While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from — or less certain than — has been suggested,” said Kealey, who has been appointed chairman of the foundation’s investigative task force. “We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.” http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/19/more-countries-caught-manipulating-their-climate-data/

To: tejek who wrote (858587)	5/19/2015 7:09:49 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1574332

What Ivy League Affirmative Action Really Looks Like — from the Inside By David French — May 18, 2015 National Review Excerpt: Asian Americans have finally had enough. They’re tired of working harder, achieving more academically, then having that held against them as they try to fulfill their educational dreams in our nation’s most elite universities. To gain entry into top private schools such as Harvard or the best public schools such as the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, no one has to do better than Americans of Chinese or Japanese or Korean descent. To make room for black, Latino, and — yes — white students, deserving Asian Americans are pushed aside. And they’re tired of it. So last week a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American groups filed complaints with the Department of Justice and Department of Education, alleging systematic racial discrimination in college admissions. They’re right, of course. Colleges do systematically disadvantage Asian students, and the problem is worse than they imagine. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Years ago, before I became a full-time constitutional lawyer, I taught at Cornell Law School — an Ivy League school and one of the top law schools in the country. My second year on the faculty, I served on the admissions committee, and I saw firsthand how not just race but ideology distorts the admissions process. Ivy League admissions are one part meritocracy — the students are quite bright — and one part ideological engineering. And if Americans broadly understood how the process works, support for affirmative action would diminish even further. First, few people understand how dramatic the boost is for favored minority groups. If students were black or the “right” kind of Latino, they would often receive admissions offers with test scores 20 or 30 percentile points lower than those of white or Asian students. When I expressed concern about an admissions offer to a black student with test scores in the 70th percentile — after we’d passed over white and Asian students with scores in the 98th percentile and far higher grades — I was told that we had to offer admission or we’d surely lose him to our Ivy League rivals. Second, these dramatic breaks rarely go to poor kids who are overcoming the challenges of ghetto schools. Many Americans, myself included, understand it is a real and substantial achievement — one that can’t be measured in test scores — to overcome extreme poverty and America’s worst public schools to compete with students from far more prosperous backgrounds. But the same reasoning doesn’t apply to the children of doctors and lawyers. Yet they get dramatic advantages as well. In fact, unless admissions committees gave rich black and Latino kids dramatic advantages, they wouldn’t be able to hit their diversity targets. At the Ivy League level, affirmative action is an enhanced-opportunity program for favored rich kids. Third, affirmative action isn’t necessarily for every black or Latino applicant. Cuban Americans often get less help. African students get less help. And, worst of all, there are times when admissions committees will actually ideologically cleanse the minority applicant pool of minorities who are seen as “less diverse” because of expressed interest in “white” professions such as, say, investment banking. If you’re a Mexican American who writes an admissions essay about defending the rights of migrant farm workers, you’re a dream candidate. If you’re a black candidate who aspires to work for Goldman Sachs, you’re “less diverse” (these are real-life examples, by the way). The ideological cleansing also happens to white candidates. In one of the most memorable incidents, the committee almost rejected an extraordinarily qualified applicant because of his obvious Christian faith (he’d attended a Christian college, a conservative seminary, and worked for religious conservative causes). In writing, committee members questioned whether they wanted his “Bible-thumping” or “God-squadding” on campus. I objected, noting that my own background was even more conservative. To their credit, the committee members apologized and offered him admission. It was sobering to see the immense achievement gap between most of the black and Latino applicants and their white and especially Asian counterparts. But I couldn’t help but think that part of that gap was due to the well-known lowered expectations for favored minorities. Even achievement-oriented students tend to work hard enough to accomplish their goals — and no harder. Why tell the best and brightest black and Latino students that they don’t have to do as well, that they can take their foot off the accelerator and still attend the best schools? Article