Climate Gate's Phillip Jones Admits no Global Warming Since 1995

Professor Phil Jones has bowed to the inevitable and accepted the reality that the data was showing him for fifteen years.  Fifteen years is a long time to go without creditable evidence of global warming.  This at least ends the spurious debate over the validity of supposed ongoing warming.

The climate warmed modestly over perhaps-s two decades leading up to 1995, at which point it peaked and settled back rather gently.  That is noteworthy, because known cooling events are quite abrupt.

I have been arguing recently that the evidence supports an increase in Atlantic heat distribution that we know little about.  We suffer from almost no data points but the two that I have are powerful.

The first is that the velocity of the Gulf Stream slowed sharply or something significant happened.  Again we have too little data.

The second is the discovery that during the Bronze Age, when temperatures were warm and constant for millennia or two in Northern Europe, the temperature of the Atlantic surface waters was an astonishing two degrees warmer!

Those are my two data points.  It tells me that the most likely forcer of warming in the northern hemisphere is changes in the Atlantic heat machine.  The evidence to date supports exactly that interpretation.

The Arctic sea ice continues to disintegrate and should be largely gone in 2012.  Even the scientists up there are now saying that this is true in a tone that suggests that they cannot believe their eyes.  The press has not quite woken up yet and more troublesome, they are still attached to the anthropogenic theory which is simply inadequate to now explain what is happening in the Arctic.

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By JONATHAN PETRE

Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing

There has been no global warming since 1995

Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. 

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory. 

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that skeptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analyzed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

     

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realized that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organization in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not. 

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Skeptics’ said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticized those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the skeptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, skeptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

The Strangest Liquid

Understanding what water is doing has been problematic forever.  This article outlines the full range of the anomalies.

I would like to throw another conjecture into this mix that is supported by the hard data that I have had to work with.  My conjecture is that all water is contaminated with biologically modified water that most likely takes the form of a ring molecule weakly bonded having the form H₃ O_3.   I have written on this before on this blog but also in my manuscript ‘Paradigm’s Shift’.  The molecule allows oxygen retention in biologically active water and explains the oxygen cycle available to marine life and land based wet environments.  It appears to run around one percent contained oxygen, but the extreme difficulty in measuring it has made it all but invisible.

It explains needle like crystals in freezing pond water.

It explains general oxygen availability in the marine environment that is not explained by seven parts per million at all.  The problem was recognized early on but appears to have been largely forgotten or at least ignored if not forgotten.

It explains the high noise threshold in spectrographic analysis which should otherwise reflect that of water.

It is chemically neutral unlike hydrogen peroxide, although easily unbound to release free oxygen and a spare hydrogen atom.

We have discovered that it is a powerful medical agent.

My conjecture is that the weirdness of water can be resolved once this molecular form is taken into account.

Inquiries are welcome from researchers who want samples to work with.

The strangest liquid: Why water is so weird

03 February 2010 by Edwin Cartlidge

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527466.200-the-strangest-liquid-why-water-is-so-weird.html?page=1

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2746/27466201.jpg

We are confronted by many mysteries, from the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the quest for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles on the grand scale, but you can observe another enduring mystery of the physical world - equally perplexing, if not quite so grand - from the comfort of your kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand.

The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you'll find it to be around 0 °C, but at the bottom it should be about 4 °C. That's because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature - another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.

Water's odd properties don't stop there (see "Water's mysteries"), and some are vital to life. Because ice is less dense than water, and water is less dense at its freezing point than when it is slightly warmer, it freezes from the top down rather than the bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life continued to thrive on lake floors and in the deep ocean. Water also has an extraordinary capacity to mop up heat, and this helps smooth out climatic changes that could otherwise devastate ecosystems.

Yet despite water's overwhelming importance to life, no single theory had been able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious properties - until now. If we can believe physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University, Sweden, and their colleagues, we could at last be getting to the bottom of many of these anomalies.

Their controversial ideas expand on a theory proposed more than a century ago by Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, who claimed that the molecules in liquid water pack together not in just one way, as today's textbooks would have it, but in two fundamentally different ways.

Key to the understanding of water's mysteries is the way its molecules - made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - interact with one another. The oxygen atom has a slight negative charge while the hydrogen atoms share a compensating positive charge. As such, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of neighbouring molecules are attracted to one another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen bonds are far weaker than the bonds that link the atoms within molecules together, and so are continually breaking and reforming, but they are at their strongest when molecules are arranged so that each hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond (see diagram). The shape of a water molecule is such that each H₂O molecule is surrounded by four neighbours arranged in the shape of a triangular pyramid - better known as a tetrahedron.

At least, that's the way the molecules arrange themselves in ice. According to the conventional view, liquid water has a similar, albeit less rigid, structure, in which extra molecules can pack into some of the open gaps in the tetrahedral arrangement.

That explains why liquid water is denser than ice - and it seems to fit the results of various experiments in which beams of X-rays, infrared light and neutrons are bounced off samples of water.

True, some physicists had claimed that water placed under certain extreme conditions may separate into two different structures (see "Extreme water"), but most had assumed it resumes a single structure under normal conditions.

Then, 10 years ago, a chance discovery by Pettersson and Nilsson called this picture into question. They were using X-ray absorption spectroscopy to investigate the amino acid glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption spectrum can shed light on the precise nature of the target substance's chemical bonds, and hence on its structure. Importantly, the researchers had got hold of a new, high-power X-ray source with which they were able to make more sensitive and accurate measurements than had ever been possible. They soon realised that the water containing their glycine sample was producing a far more interesting spectrum than the amino acid. "What we saw there was sensational," Nilsson recalls, "so we had to get to the bottom of it."

What we saw in the water was sensational, so we had to get to the bottom of it

Dramatic implications

 

The feature that sparked their interest was a peak in the absorption spectrum that is not predicted by the traditional model of liquid water. In fact, in a paper published in 2004 they concluded that at any given moment 85 per cent of the hydrogen bonds in water must be weakened or broken, far more than the 10 per cent predicted by the textbook model (Science, vol 304, p 995).

The implications of this finding are dramatic: it suggests that a total rethink of the structure of water is needed. So Nilsson and Pettersson turned to other X-ray experiments to confirm their claims. Their first move was to enlist the help of Shik Shin of the University of Tokyo, Japan, who specialises in a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy. The key thing about these spectra is that the shorter the wavelength of the X-rays in a substance's emission spectrum are, the looser the hydrogen bonding must be.

The team struck gold: the spectrum of emitted X-rays included two peaks that might correspond to two separate structures. The spike of the longer-wavelength X-rays, the researchers argued, indicates the proportion of tetrahedrally arranged molecules, while the shorter-wavelength peak reflects the proportion of disordered molecules.

Importantly, the shorter-wavelength peak in the X-ray emissions was the more intense of the two, suggesting that the loosely bound molecules must be more prevalent within the sample - an assertion that fitted the team's previous models. What's more, they also found that this peak shifts to an even shorter wavelength as the water is heated, while the other peak remains more or less fixed (Chemical Physics Letters, vol 460, p 387).

That suggests that the hydrogen bonds connecting molecules arranged in a disordered way are more likely to loosen upon heating than those linking the more regularly arranged molecules - which again is what the team had predicted. They then reanalysed older experimental data that had seemed to support the traditional picture of water - and now argue that these results, too, are consistent with the new model.

If the team is right, another question arises: how large are the different structures within the liquid? To find out, they turned to the high-power X-rays generated at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California, this time measuring how water scatters rays arriving from various angles. The results, they say, reveal that water is dotted with small regions of tetrahedrally arranged molecules, each region being 1 to 2 nanometres across (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 106, p 15214).

Combined with further measurements carried out by Uwe Bergmann at Stanford University, they concluded that the ordered structures consisted of roughly 50 to 100 molecules, on average, surrounded by a sea of the more loosely bound molecules. These regions are not fixed, however. In less than a trillionth of a second, water molecules are thought to fluctuate between the two states as the hydrogen bonds break and reform.

Explaining the inexplicable

 

The changing balance between Nilsson and Pettersson's two types of water provides an explanation for the way water's density peaks at 4 °C. In the disordered regions, water molecules are more closely packed, making them denser than regions where the molecules are arranged in a tetrahedral structure. At 0 °C these disordered regions should be relatively uncommon, but as the water is warmed the extra heat energy tends to shake the more ordered structure apart, so molecules spend less time in the tetrahedral structure and more time in the disordered regions, making it more dense on average.

Counterbalancing this, the loosely bound molecules will move around more vigorously as the temperature rises, gradually forcing them further apart from each other. Once enough of the molecules become loosely bound - at 4 °C - this expansion effect will dominate, and the density will fall with increasing temperatures.

According to Pettersson, the theory offers equally tidy explanations for many of water's other previously inexplicable anomalies - something they say that no other theory can yet achieve (see "Water's mysteries"). Martin Chaplin, a chemist at London South Bank University, agrees. Explanations based on the conventional one-component system have to "go round the houses" to try to accommodate the maxima and minima in various properties as the temperature of water changes, he says. "The dual-structure idea is strongly supported by experiment and can explain water's anomalies far more readily than the conventional picture," Chaplin says.

Nilsson and Pettersson's 2004 paper in Science has now been cited over 350 times by other researchers. Yet many remain sceptical. One criticism is that the team's explanation of their X-ray spectroscopy results is based on simulations of at least 50 interacting water molecules - an immensely complex model that can only be resolved approximately. "We need a much more accurate theory in order to make such drastic claims," says Richard Saykally at the University of California, Berkeley.

He claims that minor adjustments to the arrangement of the hydrogen bonds in the conventional structure are enough to explain Nilsson and Pettersson's X-ray results.

One member of their group, Michael Odelius of Stockholm University, even left the collaboration because he disagreed with their interpretation of the X-ray emission data.

One detail that alienated many sceptics was an assertion in the 2004 paper that the more loosely bound molecules form rings and chains - and indeed Nilsson and his colleagues are now less specific about the structure of the disordered molecules. Eugene Stanley of Boston University, however, does not believe that this fatally damages the team's case. "I don't think they should be condemned forever," he says. Though their argument is not yet watertight, the X-ray scattering results provide "one more piece of supporting evidence", he says.

There is no doubt that Nilsson and Pettersson still face stiff opposition, but the rewards of a comprehensive understanding of the structure of liquid water could be considerable. It could lead to a better understanding of how drugs and proteins interact with water molecules within the body, for example, and so provide more effective medicines. And by giving us a better idea of how water behaves around narrow pores, it might improve water desalination attempts and so increase access to clean water.

"Our understanding of water is an evolving picture," Pettersson says. "Further research by many different groups is needed before this exciting and important journey can end." With so much to gain, who could disagree?

Extreme water

 

The dual structure of water proposed by Anders Nilsson of Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University in Sweden may be a ghostly echo of the strange properties of "supercool" water - water that has been cooled to below 0 °C without freezing.

Eugene Stanley of Boston University and his colleagues have long claimed that at temperatures below about -50 °C and pressures of more than 1000 times atmospheric pressure, distinct high and low-density forms of supercool water should exist. Several research groups claim they have found evidence for these two structures.

Stanley, however, believes there should be small but discernible traces of this behaviour at higher temperatures too - seen as fluctuations in water's density. Sure enough, the size of the fleeting high and low-density regions seen in Nilsson and Pettersson's X-ray scattering experiments are consistent with his theory's predictions.

However, physicist Alan Soper at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in the UK is not convinced that these density differences are anything other than the density fluctuations that can occur in any liquid.

The crux of this dispute concerns the precise statistical distribution of regions of different density. According to Nilsson and Pettersson's model, there should be two peaks at two distinctly different densities, but Soper believes only one continuous distribution is possible.

Edwin Cartlidge is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. To enjoy more stunning images of water in motion by Shinichi Maruyama, visit his website:

www.shinichimaruyama.com

Scientists Freeze Water with Heat

By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor

posted: 11 February 2010 08:30 am ET

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/water-freeze-heat-100211.html

Imagine water freezing solid even as it's heating up. Such are the bizarre tricks scientists now find water is capable of.

Popular belief contends that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Surprisingly, if water lies in a smooth bottle and is free of any dust, it can stay liquid down to minus 40 degrees F (minus 40 degrees C) in what's called "supercooled" form. The dust and rough surfaces that water is normally found in contact with in nature can serve as the kernels around which ice crystals form.

Now researcher Igor Lubomirsky at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues have discovered another way to control the freezing point of water — via what are called quasi-amorphous pyroelectric thin films. These surfaces change their electrical charge depending on their temperature.

When pyroelectic surfaces are positively charged, water becomes easier to freeze, and when they have a negative charge, it becomes harder to freeze.

The researchers saw that supercooled water could freeze as it's being heated, as long as the temperature changes the surface charge as well. For instance, when supercooled water is on a negatively charged lithium tantalate surface, it will freeze solid immediately when the surface is heated to 17.6 degrees F (minus 8 degrees C) and its charge switches to positive.

Curiously, positively charged surfaces inspire supercooled water to freeze from the bottom up, while negatively charged surfaces cause it to freeze from the top down. This likely has to do with how water molecules orient themselves — the negatively charged oxygen atoms in water molecules naturally point toward positively charged surfaces, while the reverse is true with hydrogen atoms.

"The difference between the positive and negative charge was unexpected," Lubomirsky said.

The ability to better control the freezing temperature of supercooled water could be critical for a variety of applications, including the survival of cold-blooded animals, the cryo-preservation of cells and tissues, the protection of crops from freezing, and the ability to understand and trigger cloud formation.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 5 issue of the journal Science.

Islamic Bosum Bombers

Keeping track of sociopathic behavior is necessary in our mobile crowded world.  Most of this is sane in a crazy sort of way.  The hard part is to avoid getting all excited about it.

The Islamic jihadist cult has as usual declared war on civilization.  That has always meant that no means are too foul.  They have been around since the beginning of Islam and always hijack religious enthusiasm to recruit the naïve and gullible. The result is almost perpetual conflict with Islamic governments who are never Islamic enough and the infidels of course.  It appears to be quiet only when they are simply too impoverished to own a weapon.

As I have posted earlier, the world of Islam must establish true Islamic authority to suppress this profound evil that will have only one outcome if permitted to continue.  Unless you really want to believe that the Taliban or al Quaida is an aberration.

In the meantime we get this crudity and similar stunts whose sole purpose is to impose costs and fear on the modern world.  The reality is that it is time to use the intelligence service we have to grab these silly fools as soon as they show up on the radar and to stop worrying so much about having a terrorist event.

I do not know how many folks they can recruit to commit suicide, but it is obviously a small number.  We can accept that.  Intelligence will suppress most such treats even if they learn to snap it up a notch.  We really were that close to intercepting the Christmas bomber and he was that close to having an event.

We need to use intelligence gathering to neutralize recruiters and promoters.  I am pretty sure that the Afghan women still know how to skin such folks alive so as to inform the others of our displeasure.

Bosom bombers: Women have explosive breast implants

Authorities alarmed by possibility of surgically placed explosives

http://g2bulletin.wnd.com/

Posted: February 01, 2010

10:16 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

 The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, 

 LONDON – Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs.

The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

Hours after he had failed, GCHQ – Britain's worldwide eavesdropping "spy in the sky" agency – began to pick up "chatter" emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.

A hand-picked team was appointed by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, to investigate the threat. He described it as "one that can circumvent our defense."

Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.

In a report to Evans, one said:

"Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray. Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner."

Explosive experts at Britain's Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research center told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN when activated would blow "a considerable hole" in an airline's skin which would guarantee it would crash.

Sarah Palin as Warrior Messiah

I watched Ronald Reagan’s progress back in the seventies and eighties and remember full well how the press labeled him as a lightweight and a has-been actor throughout.  They tried in every way to diminish him.

Sarah Palin can do one thing that we all know for sure.  She can give an inspiring speech even if you do not agree with the content.  That is a powerful talent.  My next question is who is writing her stuff?  I did not begin to understand Ronald Reagan until I read his own notes and commentaries in his papers.  It then became clear that his speeches were always adapted to his own voice.  Does Sarah Palin do the same?

I am not convinced that Obama actually writes his own material too often, or I am at least suspicious, partly because it has been questioned.  We will simply not know for the present.  The type of copy Sarah uses is tailored to a specific audience that will certainly love her evangelical allusions.  She could well be as untouched by these particular teachings as most in that same audience.  They are simply nice stories after all.

This speaker could crack open the telephone book and get a standing ovation.

Her real challenge will be to temper the ambitions of her most ardent supporters.  Obama has the same problems with his true believers from the far left who also rightly believe they put him there.  Obama got elected with a fine delivery and a rather clean slate in terms of policies and ideas.  My fear at the time was that the slate was in fact empty.  It takes years of thought and hands on experience to formalize you own agenda.

Sarah’s slate is almost as clean, except that she has acted as governor and certainly appeared effective and achieved rising popularity as her term progressed which is no mean feat.  Stepping down mid term was purely an effect of her abrupt entry into national politics which made her governorship untenable.  Unless you think it is possible to govern a small state in a spotlight and a basket full of harassing lawsuits brought on by political enemies. 

Remember that the Democrats have no illusions regarding which inspiring candidate they will be facing over the next two decades.  They are sparing no expense right now to end that threat.

Also understand that she has kept the brand alive over the past twelve months.  She has not exited the stage.

Should she go on a campaign to educate the American people on what can be done to repair the US mortgage system and do that with a sensible program that folks can see through to restoring the financial health of the middle class, she would become an effective political force with a widening based.

The economy is the one issue that Obama is vulnerable on, mostly because he is at best economically incompetent and likely ill advised.  Unfortunately, so is she.  However, Ronald Reagan found his Laffer and completely reversed a decade of economic decline and produced four decades of growth.  Sarah needs her economic muse.  Everything else is applied common sense and needs simply competent advisors.

Fear Palin, a warrior messiah on a mission

Sarah Palin’s speech last weekend revealed a woman driven by a sense of divine destiny

Andrew Sullivan

So does tomorrow truly belong to her? I refer, of course, to the former governor of Alaska, who quit when she was barely past the middle of her first term because, as she explained, she was not a quitter. I refer to the first vice-presidential nominee in modern times to run for office without holding a single press conference.

I refer to a person who had no idea why there was a South Korea and a North Korea; who had trouble understanding that Africa is a continent, not a country; who believes that the first amendment guarantees the right of politicians not to be criticised too harshly; who thinks climate change is “snake-oil science”; who thinks gays can — and should be — cured; and who last weekend electrified a small gathering of Tea party supporters in Nashville, Tennessee, with a speech deemed so important that it was broadcast live on a Saturday night on every cable news station.

The answer, I am sorry to report, is: possibly. I watched Sarah Palin’s speech live and, if you leave any consideration of substance out of it, it was the most talented and effective performance of any Republican politician since Ronald Reagan. She has astonishing levels of charisma and a profound connection to her constituency: white, rural, evangelical, fundamentalist voters now roiled into ever greater levels of populist ire, with a president called Barack Hussein Obama who does nuance pretty well. She is also prepared to go where other, more — shall we say — responsible conservatives usually don’t.

Two lines stood out for me. The first was a sign that she believes and her followers believe that she has some kind of divine destiny. She has repeatedly written and said that everything is in God’s hands and that her future is simply to obey his will. In her question-and-answer session she explicitly called for “divine intervention” to save America from its current president, while openly declaring that she could well run for president in 2012.

Last week she cast herself in the mould of the biblical figure of Queen Esther, a story deeply embraced by the religious right. There was also her Eva Peron moment on Saturday in Nashville: “I will live, I will die for the people of America.”

This is not the rhetoric of a politician. You cannot imagine even a late-stage Margaret Thatcher saying such a thing without being laughed off the stage. It has the apocalyptic tones of the leader of a movement.

The second line was more ominous, and about the sitting president of the United States, leading forces in combat across the globe: “We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law.”

At every event she attends she begins by asking every service member to raise their hands for praise. She constantly invokes her son Track, who is serving in the military. And she constantly insinuates that Obama is not supporting the troops, is befriending the enemies of the United States and alienating allies. She is particularly irked that Obama treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, by arresting him in the civilian justice system, as George W Bush did with Richard Reid, the so-called “shoe bomber”, and as hundreds of terror suspects have been under Bush, Dick Cheney and Obama and every president before.

It was striking that the first third of her speech was about national security, impugning Obama for being too weak. She defined her strategy for defusing Islamism, tackling Al-Qaeda, withdrawing from Iraq, fighting Afghanistan and Pakistan as: “We win. They lose.” She also said that one way that Obama could regain the requisite image of “toughness” was by launching a pre-emptive war against Iran.

These two potent messages — delegitimising Obama as “the other” and as a weak-kneed near traitor to the troops and casting herself as the avatar of the real America, ready to die for its survival — are political gold for the core of the Republican base. But she adds something else to this equation.

She was widely mocked for scribbling some notes on her hand to guide her through the Q&A. But this endears her to those who form her strongest supporters — whites without college education who feel condescended to by liberal elites. She has found an almost perfect cycle: the more she is attacked and criticised, the deeper her base identifies with her, the more convinced they are that she is being persecuted the way that Christians, in their view, are constantly persecuted.

As her church demonstrates, she is a believer in the end-times. In the old days, rural, white America was anti-Semitic, isolationist. Under the influence of the new evangelicalism, which treats the Book of Revelation very seriously, there is a wide belief that the state of Israel represents the in-gathering of Jews necessary for the end of the world. Hence her recent statement: “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

This has serious foreign policy consequences and goes further than even those who sympathise with Binyamin Netanyahu’s government’s difficulties in reining in the settlements. What it reveals is her enormous sub-rational appeal as a female war leader for those bewildered by the events of the past decade. It would be foolish to underestimate the appeal of a beautiful, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war. She is more radical than Cheney and a good deal more charismatic.

Could any of this happen? Could this person become president? The odds remain against it. A poll last week revealed that Palin’s favourability ratings have dropped to a new low of 37%; 70% of Americans believe she is unqualified to be president, up from 60% last November. Even among conservative Republicans her ratings have slid: 45% now view her as qualified for the presidency — 66% said so last autumn.

That poll was Valium to the soul. She has had a massive PR blitz wth her book and has a platform on Fox News to broadcast her views directly to her base. Her speech was a tour de force, yet fewer and fewer take her seriously while her supporters love her more and more. Even Michael Savage, the far-right radio host banned from Britain because of his hate speech, said last week: “If you want Obama for a second term, just make sure Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee ... She is not electable as president.”

There are two unknowns, it seems to me. The first is: who else have the Republicans got? No one out there equals her grip on the base or her charisma. In the primaries she has a solid phalanx of devoted supporters who are exactly the kind of voters who show up come rain or shine. If the Republican establishment tries to counter her with a blander candidate, she could easily run as a Tea party candidate — a George Wallace-style option and one that might well guarantee Obama a landslide.

The second unknown is the economy and the war. Both could get worse. A slide back into recession or a terror attack could give the sub-rational forces that Palin channels so well a real chance to break through. This is a country of deep and dark populist moments and she is seeking hers.

I have to say I fear her. Or, rather, I fear a country that has allowed such a person to come so close to power and to dominate its discourse quite so powerfully. It is a sign that all is not well. And the world needs an America which is more stable and more calm than the one Palin represents.

andrewsullivan.com