A skeptical climate scientist, John R. Christy, awarded the Nobel Prize along with Al Gore, dissents, in a WSJ op-ed, from the new conventional “wisdom”—and fails to make the news:

I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never “proof”) and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time. …

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system’s behavior over the next five days.

Read it. Christy isn’t saying there isn’t climate change. He, like Bjorn Lomborg, is saying that we should first of all address those matters that we can fix:

The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit “global warming.”

This makes sense to me, and it’s also the way I act as a Decider/manager in my own life. It’s practical, pragmatic, and effective to do what you can do today rather than sell some pipe dream about tomorrow.

I plan to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton—a woman I can’t relate to at all—in the New York primary. Despite (and maybe even because of) this:

[video removed]

As usual, I’m a contrarian on this subject, so let me explain. I know this is supposed to be the age of transparency and that her opacity drives most people nuts. (I say “supposed to be” because no politician is ever transparent, and because every player knows that people can say whatever they want—what they say isn’t binding [except morally, and no politician is moral]; it’s what they do that matters.)

It may sound downright un-American to be in favor of opacity. On the world stage, however, opacity is a highly desirable skill in a leader. Don’t believe me? Just look at how far opacity has taken this fellow:

Anyhoo: the world stage is the arena where our next president will be called on to make her/his toughest decisions and most skillful moves. So, even though she’s a commie-lite,*** (and I’m no longer a fan of commies—lite or otherwise) there’s no question in my mind that among the Dems, Hillary is the one.

Hey! Even Rudy thinks so:

Mrs. Clinton, who leads in most national polls, said she did not think [contra Obama, that] “you promise, without preconditions, for the president to meet with the leaders of antagonistic states.”Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” scheduled to be broadcast this weekend, that Mr. Obama was “falling all over himself, begging to negotiate,” and that “this may be one of the few areas in which I agree with Hillary Clinton.”

Of course that’s yet more fodder for the anti-Hillary camp among rabidly partisan Dems. It is also highly effective for the national campaign, where the candidates will be duking it out over who is going to be the toughest leader.

Via Instapundit, here’s someone who’s thinking along the same lines:

Hillary Clinton, like Richard Nixon, is a hard-boiled realist, who understands national vital interests as well as political necessities. She will throw rhetorical bones to the left but govern in the center, because she will want to be reelected. She will employ all the usual suspects of the American foreign-policy making establishment and pursue a moderate-to-firm course in international relations. She, like her husband, will accept the necessity of “torture” under certain dire circumstances. She will not be what we want, but neither will she rock the boat very much. No socialist revolution. No unilateral retreat from American interests abroad. No Pollyannaish, Jimmy-Carter-like naiveté.

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*** In 2004, she said:

“Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Clinton said. “We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

So much goodwill, so few opportunities to bend the world to your will:

Numerous young Washingtonians bemoan the improvisational and protracted career track of the area’s public interest profession. They say the high competition for comparatively low-paying jobs saps their sense of adulthood, forcing them to spend their 20s or early 30s moving from college to work to graduate school and back to work that might or might not be temporary.

Low-paying jobs sap their sense of adulthood?

Um, a low-paying job is adulthood for most Americans.

Dear Young Idealist,

A comparatively low-paying job is often the price of admission to a field that yields a lot of other satisfactions. Also: you will have reached adulthood when you make your choice—and make peace with your choice.

Love and kisses,

Mom