Tag Archives: Dartmouth

Colgate Beats Number One Minnesota in the Mariucci Classic

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I just finished watching the Colgate Raiders beat the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in a hockey shoot-out. The regular game score was 2-2 but ‘gate won the shoot-out 2-1. It plays Ferris State for the Championship tomorrow afternoon.  My daughter, Caroline, is a Colgate Junior and is now celebrating this victory at Buffalo Wild Wings near the arena. I am thankful that her big sister, Natalie, is also there.

This was a part of the Mariucci Classic tournament that has some of the nation’s best teams. Minnesota wanted very badly to win this tourney. The last tournament I saw involving the U was the Dairy Queen Classic last March at the Metrodome. In the first game there, Dartmouth beat the U 10-1. I mentioned that just because I love to mention that.  Cheers

Climate Change Reconsidered On a Snowy April 13

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Today, I was inundated by emails about climate change, nee Global Warming. I have never been part of the hysteria, and I use that term properly,  and here’s why. My first encounter with the so called evidence in the climate change case was ten years ago at a Dartmouth Alumni Club lunch where one of our members, a lawyer with an environmental law practice, promised to show us the overwhelming evidence of global warming.

His first evidence was the Mann Hockey Stick Graph that has been proven to be total nonsense. As this lawyer explained the slow, straight line, rise in temperature to the 20th century, and then the rapid rise in the last decade (up, maybe, half a degree,) the questions started. Where was the Medieval Warm Period, How about the Little Ice Age? The lawyer was much flummoxed by the questions, but shifted to another piece of evidence. This was another graph, since deleted from alarmist materials, that showed overlaying lines indicating the correlation between CO2 and Temperature. The graph used blue and red lines and they did move together, so it was possible to think that the cause, CO2, preceded the effect, temperature increases. This continued until someone asked which line was the CO2.

The lecturer, now flummoxed again, had to admit that the red line to the right was CO2 and the blue line to the left side of the time scale was temperature. That had never been pointed out before; we just assumed that the alleged cause, CO2, would lead the effect, temperature increase, ergo CO2 was red and temperature blue, When asked how the effect could precede the cause, the lawyer said, “the relationship between CO@ and temperature is very complicated.” I heard Al Gore say the same thing some years later.

Based on this meeting, I have greeted each new piece of evidence such as tree rings and ice cores with great skepticism. I rejoiced when the hysteria diminished. Recently, however, there is a new effort to prove Climate Change, end carbon use, and save a planet that is not in danger.

Today, sitting in Minneapolis with snow on the ground, more on the way and 30 degree temperatures on April 13, I was told that the cold Spring is due to melting Arctic Sea ice that was at its sixth lowest extent ever. EVER. To prove the case, a link was provided and it is here. http://nsidc.org/articseaicenews/2012/daily-image/. So I looked at the image and found a satellite image of the Arctic Sea with an orange line showing what the ice was like when the world was safe. Well, the orange line indicates very little ice loss. So, what’s the big deal.

This is the big deal. Climate Change is a political movement based on false science that is manipulated by government that buys the loyalty of scientists by funding the climate science laboratories around the world. Billions of dollars had been directed to scientists who toe the line. Thousands of mortgages have been paid off by this effort. So, why does government need to do this? It is because this is the path to total economic control. If you can control carbon, you control economic activity. However, the Big Deal is that if carbon control can be achieved, the government or the party in charge can then wait a year and announce that climate change has been solved and temperatures are lowering and that it (the party in charge) has save the world, so you must give us total power over everything, which is what the party in charge seems to want. 

The only barrier to this power grab is the common sense of the people who recognize that there is no warming/change and are just now starting to realize that the party in charge has been lying to them. We’ll see where that goes.

 

Metrodome, Wealth Taxes, and Global Warming -Sunday Ramblings

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This morning I am getting ready to attend my last baseball game at the Metrodome, that domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis that has served so well for three decades. The Metrodome replaced horribly inadequate Metropolitan Stadium in April, 1982. The Dome, as it came to be called, provided weather protection that is essential in Minneapolis. The Twins and University of Minnesota football teams now play in their own stadiums without such protection and that is starting to tell on fans. I am now hearing real concerns from friends who just don’t intend to go to Twins games until it warms up. This bothers me as that team need early attendance to have a successful season. This is because the stadium holds 39,000 seats, or an inventory of 3,159,000 seats for the season. Major league average attendance was 30, 895 in 2012, or 2,502,495 total. If early season attendance isn’t at capacity, it can’t be made up later as the 39,114 cap is there. So if attendance is off in April and May, it can’t be made up later. If the team languishes under the Major League average attendance, its competitiveness will be hindered as it is in the 15tth largest market and media revenues are proportionately average.

The Metrodome provided protection from the weather and early season attendance was always good. Fans in Minnesota got used to attending games in April and are only now catching on to the fact of climate reality after being sheltered for thirty years.

My last Metrodome baseball game will be between Dartmouth, my alma mater, and Utah as part of the Dairy Queen Baseball Classic, a tournament produced by the University of Minnesota baseball team, that go thrashed by Dartmouth in the first game Friday night 10-3. It had to be hard for the Big Ten Gophers to get beaten by a group of guys from the smallest of the Ivies, but Dartmouth is a baseball powerhouse, it seems.

Another rambling for this morning is prompted by The Star Tribune headline that most tax payers want taxes raised on the wealthy and not on them.  This is not shocking. We also hear Obama saying he wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Therein is the problem. Both here in Minnesota and nationally, Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthiest but only want to tax income and not wealth.. (I had a Democratic friend once tell me that government had a lien on all income because it created the environment in which it was created or earned. This was an early “you didn’t build that” moment.)

Income is what is produced from labor or capital paid to individuals as compensation. Wealth is created from the appreciation of assets, (Microsoft stock, for example) Income that is retained (i.e. after tax) is often used to acquire assets or build businesses. Taxing income limits the ability of individuals to accumulate wealth. The proper tax system would tax wealth and not income. For example, if a billionaire was taxed at 1% on net worth, she would pay $10,000,000 in taxes. An average person, determining net worth for tax purposed, could deduct mortgage, and credit card debt and income would be taxed only as to the amount that is retained. I think Buffett, (Wealth at $45 billion?) would pay $450,000,000. He could afford that.

When a politician says he want to tax the wealthiest, ask her why she is not doing so with a wealth tax. At least ask why is it not considered. 

Finally, (I have to get to the game) I am pleased to note several posts indicating the end of the global warming hysteria. it was a scam from day one, but Al Gore and others have made billions of dollars scaring a generation of children. The so called “hockey stick graph” that was the iconic symbol of global warming, was so badly flawed as to be ludicrous, however, the media embraced it as true. Nevertheless, that fact Global Warming ended, if it ever existed, sixteen years ago is now recognized as true. In fact, we maybe heading for an Ice Age, but that’s where we were in 1972. Maybe Cooling will now have its day. The cure for Global Cooling? You guessed it, more co2!! But we know that doesn’t cause warming, so we need to wait on the sun. Cheers, Clark