More Climategate, and other things

Jenn over at A Conservative Shemale gives us a great multi-subject post today, starting with more problems for the whole global warming/cooling/climate-change thingamabob:

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

[...]

“One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.”

They didn't "allow fully for temperature change over the last 2,000 years." Doesn't that cover the entire period where any man-made climate change would actually have occurred? That's some "mistake"!

She then links us to an article where the AGW pushers are trying to defend their claims.

[N]one of that gets at the question du jour, which is how big a role humans are playing. Until later on. Lashof and Deans say it’s a big one, and their source for saying so is a government report compiled by the nation’s top science, defense, and diplomatic agencies—NOAA, NASA, the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation, the Department of State (none of which have been marred in scandal)—over the course of two decades, through four presidential administrations.

Notice their source is a government report - they don't say where the agencies got their data for the report. Remember, most of the problems cropping up recently in the whole AGW theory are about problems with the data. It doesn't matter how "nonpartisan" the report is if it's based on corrupted, compromised, cherry-picked, or imaginary data.

She also hits on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, taking us to an article about a study showing that other militaries have found allowing openly gay soldiers to continue to serve has not been disruptive even with rapid transitions.

A comprehensive new study on foreign militaries that have made transitions to allowing openly gay service members concludes that a speedy implementation of the change is not disruptive. The finding is in direct opposition to the stated views of Pentagon leaders, who say repealing a ban on openly gay men and women in the United States armed forces should take a year or more.

Remember, a lot of the people pushing for a "slow" repeal of DADT are the ones who don't want it repealed in the first place - or would prefer to go back to the complete ban that existed before DADT.

She has more, too, but you should go to her blog to read it all.

Oh, good grief

Now JFK got shut down because someone went through the wrong door.

A busy terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport was evacuated after a man opened a restricted door and set off an alarm, authorities said, making it the second known security breach at a New York-area airport this month.
[...]
Authorities earlier said the security breach was caused by a passenger who was exiting Kennedy's Terminal 8 and opened a door that was supposed to be used only by airport workers.

There's a simple way to keep people from going through doors that they're not supposed to go through. It's called a lock. There are even ways to make it easy for the people who are supposed to use the door to open it.

If the TSA was actually about security, these basic measures would have been in place years ago. Instead they use signs. Like a terrorist is going to care about the sign that says "Don't go in here, or else."

Authorities were initially unsure Saturday whether the person had been coming or going from the JFK terminal, and they evacuated the secure areas of the building while they investigated. The Transportation Security Administration said its agents and Port Authority police were involved in the investigation. [emphasis mine]

How much damage could a real terrorist have done during that confusion when the authorities didn't know what was going on.

It's not about security, it's about visibility.

The Elephant in the Room

NPR had a couple of stories this morning on airport security and the underwear bomber. While both had some interesting information, I found myself getting angrier the longer I listened. Why? Because they kept ignoring the real breakdown in the whole system. They were going on and on about how the intelligence agencies are "inundated" and suffering from information overload. They went on about the full body scanners that wouldn't have caught this guy even if they had been used. I got mad, because they kept ignoring the real question:

How did a lone traveler, who paid cash and had no luggage for an international flight, get on a plane without additional screening?

See, either of those factors alone are generally considered suspicious, and should warrant additional scrutiny. Both together should be a red flag to screeners that this person should be thoroughly investigated before being allowed on the plane. Add in his religion and national origin, and you should have a Big Giant Red Flag signaling that this person should not get on a plane without a strip search and maybe a body cavity search, too.

This was not a failure of the Watch Lists, or the CIA/NSA/FBI or any other intelligence agency. This was not about the failure to use the full body scanners that were at the airport where he boarded. Yes there were failures at all those levels, but they were all irrelevant in this case. This was a failure on the part of the TSA to recognize basic signs of a suicide bomber. This was a failure to use basic security procedures that would have caught this twit in the absence of all the information that the CIA/NSA/FBI/TLA had. Basic procedures that would have stopped him without relying on all the high-tech gizmos that may or may not work.

It just shows that, as many others have pointed out recently, this administration is fundamentally unserious about real security.