Reddit’s science forum banned climate deniers.

[galdur]

Did you know that in some so called colleges people are actually being paid money for teaching courses in Climate Change Fiction. Amazing, huh?

[Wilikon]

Did you know that in some so called colleges people are actually being paid money for teaching courses in Climate Change Fiction. Amazing, huh?

HARVARD, SYRACUSE RESEARCHERS CAUGHT LYING TO BOOST OBAMA CLIMATE RULES



E-mails obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency show that Harvard University, Syracuse University and two of their researchers appear to have falsely claimed a study supporting EPA’s upcoming global warming rules was conducted “independent(ly)” of the agency.


In early May, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change purported to support a key EPA claim about its forthcoming global warming rules aimed at coal-fired power plants. The New York Times’ headline, “EPA Emissions Plan Will Save Thousands of Lives, Study Finds,” typified the media coverage.

Across the media, the authors were innocuously described as simply university-affiliated “researchers.” After all, the researchers had declared they had “no competing financial interests” in their study. Both universities had issued media releases heralding the study as the “first independent, peer-reviewed paper of its kind.”

Study co-author Charles Driscoll of Syracuse University told the Buffalo News, “I’m an academic, not a politician. I don’t have a dog in this fight.” The claim of independence was also emphatically asserted by study co-author Jonathan Buonocore of Harvard University. “The EPA, which did not participate in the study or interact with its authors, Buonocore says, roundly welcomed its findings.”

But a closer look at these claims of independence raises serious doubts.

An online search of EPA’s web site revealed that Syracuse’s Driscoll has previously involved as a principal investigator in studies that received over $3.6 million in research grants from EPA. Co-author Dallas Burtraw, a researcher at the think tank Resources for the Future, had been involved in previous EPA grants totaling almost $2 million. Harvard co-author Jonathan I. Levy had been involved in over $9.5 million worth of grants. Co-author Joel Schwartz, also of Harvard, had been previously involved in over $31 million worth of grants from EPA.

Are we to believe that a group of researchers who had previously received some $45 million in grants from EPA, no doubt hoping for more in the future, could possibly not have any dog in this fight? It’s probably not necessary to ask how this slipped past the incurious mainstream media.

Intrigued by Bounocore’s odd assertion of absolutely no involvement with EPA, I submitted a request to EPA under the Freedom of Information Act for email between the study authors and EPA staff. Although subsequent wrangling with agency staff gave me doubt that I would ever get anything, I received, much to my surprise, 99 pages of emails after mere weeks.

The emails reveal that study co-authors Driscoll, Buonocore, Schwartz and Harvard’s Kathy Lambert were definitely in contact with key EPA staff regarding this research.

A July 8, 2014 email shows Lambert arranging a conference call with EPA staff to get EPA’s input on the study. One of the EPA staff involved was the contact person for agency’s Clean Power Plan cost-benefit analysis. A subsequent e-mail shows that the top EPA staffer on the Clean Power Plan cost-benefit analysis was added to the call.

A July 15, 2014 email from Driscoll to an EPA staffer boasts of “considerable interest” in their analysis from unnamed outside “groups.” One sentence after buttering up the EPA staffer, Driscoll asks her if they could have a phone call to discuss fundraising for a conference Driscoll is organizing. No appearance of attempted financial conflict there?

A November 7, 2014 e-mail from Lambert to EPA about the study reads, “We would like to follow back up with you by phone to discuss possible next steps in this analysis and what role you might be able to play.”

This issue goes deeper than mere truth-telling. The EPA’s controversial Clean Power Plan hinges on the notion that shuttering coal plants will save lives.

The EPA’s proposed global warming plan ostensibly focuses on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants. But the bulk of the alleged benefits of the plan actually arise from collateral projections of lives supposedly saved by reducing coal plant emissions related to particulate matter and ozone.

As EPA values each life “saved” at about $10 million, the claim that the rules will save 6,600 lives per year puts the rules’ alleged benefits on the order of $66 billion per year, far in excess of industry projections of the rules’ costs.

These EPA claims, however, are controversial to say the least. A compelling alternate view is that no lives will be saved because, for one reason, EPA’s own extensive clinical research shows that particulate matter and ozone in outdoor air do not kill anyone.

The only casualty in this case is our confidence in the independence of EPA-funded researchers.


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/04/harvard-syracuse-researchers-caught-lying-to-boost-obama-climate-rules/

[Wilikon]

NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’



National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years.

“Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s [National Centers for Environmental Information] do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus,'” wrote NOAA scientists in their study presenting newly adjusted climate data.

To increase the rate in warming, NOAA scientists put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays, adjusted ship-based temperature readings upward, and slightly raised land-based temperatures as well. Scientists said adjusted ship-based temperature data “had the largest impact on trends for the 2000-2014 time period, accounting for 0.030°C of the 0.064°C trend difference.” They added that the “buoy offset correction contributed 0.014°C… to the difference, and the additional weight given to the buoys because of their greater accuracy contributed 0.012°C.”

NOAA says for the years 1998 to 2012, the “new analysis exhibits more than twice as much warming as the old analysis at the global scale,” at 0.086 degrees Celsius per decade compared to 0.039 degrees per decade.

“This is clearly attributable to the new [Sea Surface Temperature] analysis, which itself has much higher trends,” scientists noted in their study. “In contrast, trends in the new [land surface temperature] analysis are only slightly higher.”

Global surface temperature data shows a lack of statistically significant warming over the last 15 years — a development that has baffled climate scientists. Dozens of explanations have been offered to explain the hiatus in warming, but those theories may be rendered moot by NOOA’s new study.

NOAA’s study, however, notes the overall warming trend since 1880 has not been significantly changed. What’s increased is the warming trend in recent decades.

“Our new analysis now shows the trend over the period 1950-1999, a time widely agreed as having significant anthropogenic global warming, is 0.113 [degrees Celsius per decade], which is virtually indistinguishable with the trend over the period 2000-2014″ of 0.116 degrees per decade, according to the study.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “statement of two years ago — that the global surface temperature has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years’ — is no longer valid,” the study claims.

But that’s not all NOAA did to increase the warming trend in recent decades. Climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts noted that to “manufacture warming during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward.”

“If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” Tisdale and Watts wrote on the science blog Watts Up With That.

“It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise,” Tisdale and Watts added. “Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”

NOAA’s updated data was also criticized by climate scientists with the libertarian Cato Institute. Scientists Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger argue the adjustments made by NOAA were “guaranteed to put a warming trend in recent data.”

Cato scientists also argued that NOAA’s new data is an outlier compared to other global temperature records, which overwhelmingly show a hiatus in warming.

It “would seem more logical to seriously question the [NOAA] result in light of the fact that, compared to those bulk temperatures, it is an outlier, showing a recent warming trend that is not in these other global records,” the three scientists wrote.

“Adjusting good data upwards to match bad data seems questionable, and the fact that the buoy network becomes increasingly dense in the last two decades means that this adjustment must put a warming trend in the data,” wrote Michaels, Knappenberger and Lindzen, who is a top climatologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scientists and climate experts skeptical of man-made global warming have become increasingly critical of temperature adjustments made by government climate agencies like NASA and NOAA. Skeptics charge that agencies like NOAA have been tampering with past temperatures to make the warming trend look much more severe than is shown in the raw data.

“It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much,” they wrote. “And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.”

Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry also chimed in, arguing that NOAA excluded extremely accurate sea buoy data in order to erase the hiatus in warming. Curry wrote that it “seems rather ironic, since this is the period where there is the greatest coverage of data with the highest quality of measurements — ARGO buoys and satellites don’t show a warming trend.”

“Nevertheless, the NOAA team finds a substantial increase in the ocean surface temperature anomaly trend since 1998,” she wrote. “This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. The global surface temperature datasets are clearly a moving target. So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.”


http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/04/noaa-fiddles-with-climate-data-to-erase-the-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/2/

[Spendulus]

NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’



National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

The way you are talking, I get the definite feeling that you wouldn't mind seeing the Adjusters put out of work.

What is your problem?

They have families.

They are human too.

They have high bills to pay.

And they have pet dogs and cats.

[Wilikon]

NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’



National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

The way you are talking, I get the definite feeling that you wouldn't mind seeing the Adjusters put out of work.

What is your problem?

They have families.

They are human too.

They have high bills to pay.

And they have pet dogs and cats.

... And all of those facts are adding a huge weight on global warming... These humans should show how the rest of us should act to save a whale or two... I have 50 000 gallons of kool aid and and a nice private jungle for them in guyana...

[galdur]

[tvbcof]

http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Al_Gore_CreditCard.jpg

I'd not known about the Chilean Sea Bass thing.  What a surprise.  Lol!

[Wilikon]

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets New High in May



Sea ice extent in Antarctica last month set a new record high for the month of May, according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Meanwhile Arctic sea ice extent in May was the third lowest on record but essentially the same as it was a decade ago – marginally above the levels recorded in 2004 and 2006.

Sea ice extent in Antarctica last month set a new record high for the month of May, according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Meanwhile Arctic sea ice extent in May was the third lowest on record but essentially the same as it was a decade ago – marginally above the levels recorded in 2004 and 2006.

NSIDC data shows average sea ice extent around Antarctica reached 12.10 million sq. km. in May – some 12 per cent above the long term average for the period from 1981 to 2010 of 10.79 million sq.km. May sea ice extent in Antarctica is growing at a rate of 2.9 per cent per decade, according to NSIDC data.

Meanwhile Arctic sea ice extent in May was 12.65 million sq. km, some 5 per cent below the long-term average for the period from 1981 to 2010 of 13.38 million sq. km. but broadly in line with the sea ice extent reported a decade ago and just 2 per cent below the average over the period from 2005 to 2015.

Over the last ten years, the extent of Arctic sea ice in May has remained within the range 12.61 million to 13.4 million sq. km. notwithstanding the fact that the linear rate of decline in sea ice extent for May through 2015 over the satellite record is 2.3 per cent per decade and that May sea ice extent has now declined for four years in a row.



Here is the data from NSIDC for Arctic sea ice extent (measured in millions of square kilometres) for each May over the last decade:

Year   Arctic sea ice extent (million km2)

2005   12.99
2006   12.61
2007   12.88
2008   13.18
2009   13.40
2010   13.11
2011   12.81
2012   13.11
2013   13.08
2014   12.77
2015   12.65

Average Arctic sea ice extent for May over the period 2005-2015: 12.96 million sq. km.

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-new-high-in-may.html

[galdur]

We Are The World: Global Warming Ends African Drought Catastrophe

Global warming put an end to one of the most heart-wrenching tragedies of the past century. A new peer-reviewed study confirms global warming is responsible for ending the African drought and famine that inspired USA for Africa and the iconic 1985 humanitarian relief song, “We Are the World.”

From 1972-1984, a prolonged drought devastated the Sahel region on the southern border of the Sahara Desert, killing more than 100,000 people. Photographs of emaciated and starving African children became a pervasive cultural phenomenon, inspiring sympathy, food and money donations, and celebrity concerts performed by the most popular musical artists of the generation.

A newly published study in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Climate Change documents global warming was the hero that ended the tragedy. According to the study, “the direct influence of higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was the main cause” for the end of the devastating drought. With the Earth’s modest recent warming, warmer air has been able to hold more evaporated moisture from the ocean and then bring more frequent and substantial rains to previously rain-parched African lands. ....more

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/06/05/we-are-the-world-global-warming-ends-african-drought-catastrophe/

[Spendulus]

I really like this idea. 

Basically, you can be bad, and buy your way out of it.  Your payments are used for GOOD, so your BAD is offset and goes away.

Maybe spouses should be able to be BAD, and cheat.  Then they could pay someone...let's say....ME....and I'd use their payments for GOOD, and they would offset their BAD and be CHEAT NEUTRAL.

I promise I would use some of the money they sent me for GOOD.  You can trust me on that.

[galdur]

Nononono, don´t get me wrong this problem absolutely doesn´t apply to global warming, climate change, climate chaos or whatever it´s currently being called. Although that field drowns in its own fraud every second year or so it always gets resurrected right away stronger than ever which of course proves its veracity. Posted solely for educational purposes.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Major Medical Journal Retracts Numerous Scientific Papers After Fake Peer-Review Scandal

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/08/2015 21:30 -0400

 
A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications. As The Washington Post reports, BioMed Central - a well-known publication of peer-reviewed journals - shows a partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China. The Committee on Publication Ethics stated, it "has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals... that need to be retracted."

Peer review is the vetting process designed to guarantee the integrity of scholarly articles by having experts read them and approve or disapprove them for publication. With researchers increasingly desperate for recognition, citations and professional advancement, the whole peer-review system has come under scrutiny in recent years for a host of flaws and irregularities, ranging from lackadaisical reviewing to cronyism to outright fraud.

And as The Washington Post reports,  BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications...

A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged.”
Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem.

The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.
Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-editors of Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks research integrity and first reported the BioMed Central retractions, have counted a total of 170 retractions in the past few years across several journals because of fake peer reviews.

“The problem of fake peer reviewers is affecting the whole of academic journal publishing and we are among the ranks of publishers hit by this type of fraud,” Patel of BioMed’s ethics group wrote in November.
 
“The spectrum of ‘fakery’ has ranged from authors suggesting their friends who agree in advance to provide a positive review, to elaborate peer review circles where a group of authors agree to peer review each others’ manuscripts, to impersonating real people, and to generating completely fictitious characters. From what we have discovered amongst our journals, it appears to have reached a higher level of sophistication. The pattern we have found, where there is no apparent connection between the authors but similarities between the suggested reviewers, suggests that a third party could be behind this sophisticated fraud.”
 
In a blog post yesterday, Elizabeth Moylan, BioMed Central’s senior editor for research integrity, said an investigation begun last year revealed a scheme to “deceive” journal editors by suggesting “fabricated” reviewers for submitted articles. She wrote that some of the “manipulations” appeared to have been conducted by agencies that offer language-editing and submission assistance to non-English speaking authors.
Perhaps most astonishing was the fact that...

Ultimately, when they tracked down some of the scientists in whose names reviews were written, they found that they hadn’t written them at all. Someone else had, using the scientists’ names.
But that Chinese Micro-cap Biotech stock is definitely still worth buying... even after rising 3000% YTD.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-08/major-medical-journal-retracts-numerous-scientific-papers-after-fake-peer-review-sca

[hdbuck]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

[Spendulus]

Nononono, don´t get me wrong this problem absolutely doesn´t apply to global warming, climate change, climate chaos or whatever.....

Right!

Climate change is staffed by Climatologists.  This is shortened for convenience from Climatolobotomized, which most of the people in the field have difficulty spelling or remembering.

These high caliber individuals are of the sort you just don't need to worry about problems like fraud and intentional or accidental errors.  Because they report that the temperature is increasing, and since we all know and agree that the world temperature is increasing, there isn't any possibility they will be wrong.  Sure, it was colder than a witches tit around here, even snowing the first days of June, but that just proves the Climate Change.

[Spendulus]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

It's likely caused by Global Warming.

My results suggest that in the year 2090, crime rates for most offense categories will be 1.5–5.5% higher because of climate change. Under the IPCC׳s A1B climate scenario, the United States will experience an additional additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft, compared to the total number of offenses that would have occurred between 2010 and 2099 in the absence of climate change.3

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069613001289

All this is Settled Science, supported by the Consensus.  You wouldn't want to argue against the Con, would you?

[Wilikon]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

[Spendulus]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

Well, since the science is settled, there is no need for more science work.  There is, of course, a need for the Adjusters to move the numbers to what the Science says they should be.  Like for temperature.  And there is a need for Enforcers to get all the people to do what the Science says they should do.  But since it's all settled, additional funds spent on Science would be wasted.

[galdur]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

Well, since the science is settled, there is no need for more science work.  There is, of course, a need for the Adjusters to move the numbers to what the Science says they should be.  Like for temperature.  And there is a need for Enforcers to get all the people to do what the Science says they should do.  But since it's all settled, additional funds spent on Science would be wasted.

That pic somehow reminds me of Roman Emperor Caligula. He was a total fruitcake and so crazy that he even declared war on the sea and the god residing there, Neptune. Had his soldiers attack and stab the water with spears. Nowadays they also declare wars on this and that, even abstractions like drugs poverty et cetera, most of the time with dubious results of course. And now Obama is declaring war on climate change. How not surprising.

[Wilikon]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

Well, since the science is settled, there is no need for more science work.  There is, of course, a need for the Adjusters to move the numbers to what the Science says they should be.  Like for temperature.  And there is a need for Enforcers to get all the people to do what the Science says they should do.  But since it's all settled, additional funds spent on Science would be wasted.

That pic somehow reminds me of Roman Emperor Caligula. He was a total fruitcake and so crazy that he even declared war on the sea and the god residing there, Neptune. Had his soldiers attack and stab the water with spears. Nowadays they also declare wars on this and that, even abstractions like drugs poverty et cetera, most of the time with dubious results of course. And now Obama is declaring war on climate change. How not surprising.

The pix and the "winter is coming" meme are only funny if you watch game of thrones.

[Wilikon]

FLASHBACK: ABC's ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015

New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12,  2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.

The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99." (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: "Gas reached over $9 a gallon." (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)

On June 12, 2008, correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program "puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015."

As one expert warns that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly, a visual shows New York City being engulfed by water. The video montage includes another unidentified person predicting that "flames cover hundreds of miles."

Then-GMA co-anchor Chris Cuomo appeared frightened by this future world. He wondered, "I think we're familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That's seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?"

Ultimately, ABC delayed the air-date for Earth 2100 and the one-hour show didn't debut until June 2, 2009. The program showcased the terrible impact of global warming from 2015 through 2100. In the special, a "storm of the century" wiped out Miami. Other highlights included a destroyed New York City and an abandoned Las Vegas. By 2084, Earth's population will apparently be just 2.7 billion.

On June 13, 2008, ABCNews.com promoted the special by hyperventilating, "Are we living in the last century of our civilization?" Unlike the 2015 predictions, that suggestion hasn't (yet) been proven wrong.

Seven years later, the network has quietly ignored its horribly inaccurate predictions about 2015. When it comes to global warming claims, apparently results don't matter for ABC. 

A partial transcript of the June 12, 2008 GMA segment is below:



http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june#sthash.NmmbgbxN.dpuf

[Spendulus]

74 NASA Scientists Been killed In The Last Two Years.

http://www.neonnettle.com/sphere/279-74-nasa-scientists-been-killed-in-the-last-two-years-what-s-going-on-

dangerous profession there..

Well, since the science is settled, there is no need for more science work.  There is, of course, a need for the Adjusters to move the numbers to what the Science says they should be.  Like for temperature.  And there is a need for Enforcers to get all the people to do what the Science says they should do.  But since it's all settled, additional funds spent on Science would be wasted.

That pic somehow reminds me of Roman Emperor Caligula. He was a total fruitcake and so crazy that he even declared war on the sea and the god residing there, Neptune. Had his soldiers attack and stab the water with spears. Nowadays they also declare wars on this and that, even abstractions like drugs poverty et cetera, most of the time with dubious results of course. And now Obama is declaring war on climate change. How not surprising.

The pix and the "winter is coming" meme are only funny if you watch game of thrones.

I never did believe the Bamster was black but the blue eyes prove he's not.