Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Would an aerogenerator help meet the UK's ambitious wind energy goals?

Remember back in the halcyon days when people still believed Judy Miller was a journalist? The Bush Administration repeatedly used her as a cut-out, leaking highly classified information to her (like intelligence about aluminum tubes, mobile bioweapons labs, and even covert agents' identities). She would then publish a story on the first page of the NYT. And Administration officials would quote her story, now treating the highly classified information as if it had been declassified. It worked like a charm until Judy's credibility got so damaged with her Iraq reporting that she couldn't oblige Cheney by writing an article leaking Valerie Wilson's identity.

In 1992, the opposite occurred. Someone leaked a draft of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance to the NYT.

The document was provided to The New York Times by an official who believes this post-cold-war strategy debate should be carried out in the public domain.

The NYT published chunks of the draft, which shocked voters and allies. So poor little Scooter Libby, always the faithful acolyte, had to rewrite the draft to hide Cheney's aggressive nature, perhaps believing they could persuade presidential year voters that Bush's aides weren't a bunch of nut-cases before the election that November.

Now the National Security Archive has published a series of those drafts, including a few memos from Libby, now a felon, to the guy he'd later commit a felony to protect . . .

Pathetically, the Bush Administration has refused to declassify some of the same passages that appeared in the NYT almost sixteen years ago.

-- EMPTYWHEEL

What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can't hear it, but as CBS News correspondent David Martin experienced first hand, you can feel it.

Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it's still not there. That because in the middle of a war, the military just can't bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn't kill.

-- 60 MINUTES

I'm no scientist. Neither is Nobel Prize winning global warming alarmist and hypocrite Al Gore. Nor are the legions of global warming deniers who are pointing to a stretch of cold weather as "proof" that global warming is a myth.

We are, most of us, not qualified in any way, shape, or form to make any kind of technical or scientific judgment on most of the evidence relating to climate change unless we happen to hold an advanced technical degree and are able to examine that evidence in its totality and not pick and choose headlines that bolster one's political position on the issue.

The idiocy inherent in the prospect of myself or 95% of internet commenters – right and left – trying to hold a scientific debate on a subject where almost all of us are not scientists and where most of the evidence is couched in the arcane and mysterious language of scientific disciplines for which the overwhelming majority of us barely realize the parameters of study is self evident.

Not that this matters because at bottom, we who are unable to examine the evidence on the same plane as climatologists, meteorologists, atmospheric physicists, environmental scientists, and a hodgepodge of chemists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists end up simply believing one side or the other. Like religious fanatics, the two sides argue dogma while rejecting the other’s "beliefs" as apostasy.

Considering the stakes, this is madness. And scientists are not helping matters any. Likening those who question the conclusion that global warming is caused largely by man and that it threatens civilization to Holocaust deniers is far beyond the pale of rational discourse. Similarly, those who use the term "climate Nazis" to describe global warming advocates have no place in this debate.

-- RICK MORAN

Let the naysayers knock the Prius if they must, but thanks to the onboard computer and real-time graphical display, I'm now hyper-aware of how much energy I consume by driving, and how much even tiny changes in design, behavior or terrain/environmental conditions can result in big savings (or big losses) over the long haul.

For instance: Accelerate gradually, and you'll use slightly less energy than if you put pedal to the metal in a vain attempt to go from 0 to 60 in a few seconds. In general, the faster you go, the more energy it takes to maintain that speed, so driving just at (or slightly under) the speed limit can also result in energy savings. Driving uphill uses more energy than coasting downhill (any avid bicyclist could tell you that much), and driving into a high wind uses up more gas than driving with the wind at your back. (This is also why it takes less time to fly cross-country going East to West, than it does going West to East.) Don't even get me started on what a 10-hour drive from Salt Lake City to LA in gusting crosswinds through the mountain pass did to my average miles per gallon. (*shakes fist impotently at sky*) Damn you, Nature!

-- JENNIFER OUELLETTE