This, by a supporter of socialized medicine?
Or this spoof of it?
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Is The Dam Breaking?
Via a commenter, I see that James Randi, who has sort of a history of spotting scientific fraud, has apparently lost his mind and become a “denier”:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a group of thousands of scientists in 194 countries around the world, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize — has issued several comprehensive reports in which they indicate that they have become convinced that “global warming” is and will be seriously destructive to life as we know it, and that Man is the chief cause of it. They say that there is a consensus of scientists who believe we are headed for disaster if we do not stop burning fossil fuels, but a growing number of prominent scientists disagree. Meanwhile, some 32,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhDs, have signed The Petition Project statement proclaiming that Man is not necessarily the chief cause of warming, that the phenomenon may not exist at all, and that, in any case, warming would not be disastrous.
Happily, science does not depend on consensus. Conclusions are either reached or not, but only after an analysis of evidence as found in nature. It’s often been said that once a conclusion is reached, proper scientists set about trying to prove themselves wrong. Failing in that, they arrive at a statement that appears — based on all available data — to describe a limited aspect about how the world appears to work. And not all scientists are willing to follow this path. My most excellent friend Martin Gardner once asked a parapsychologist just what sort of evidence would convince him he had erred in coming to a certain conclusion. The parascientist replied that he could not imagine any such situation, thus — in my opinion — removing him from the ranks of the scientific discipline rather decidedly.
History supplies us with many examples where scientists were just plain wrong about certain matters, but ultimately discovered the truth through continued research. Science recovers from such situations quite well, though sometimes with minor wounds.
I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid.
Emphasis mine. I think that claiming that there is a “consensus” and that “the science is settled” are semantically equivalent to “I can’t imagine any such situation.” Such people are many things, but they are not people who truly respect, or even understand, science. They are politicians, encouraging political acts.
[Update a while later]
I’ve deleted my reference to Little Green Footballs, pending the outcome of an ongoing civil email conversation with Charles.
Stock Up On The Popcorn
Fresh from the hoosegow, Jim Traficant wants to run for Congress again.
I sat on the subway with him under the Capitol once, years ago. He treated me like he’d known me forever, even though we’d never met. I guess that kind of personality is a key ingredient to being a politician.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I should add that his hairpiece really did look like a dead animal. It’s kind of funny what kind of hairballs representative democracy will cough up and send to Washington.
First The Peace Prize
Will a Nobel for Literature be next? And an Emmy for the reading?
I mean, this is must-see teevee.
Plus, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, in its inspiration of other timeless poetry.
Maybe It’s Because You Are A Loser
What kind of idiot puts themselves $125,000 in debt to get a theater degree?
Alfred said he owes more than $125,000 for his degrees in theater when he’s not even working in that field.
“I work at a call center, and I make $10 an hour,” he said. “It’s surreal. I feel like a loser.”
I continue to think that academia is the next big bubble waiting to pop.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Another reason to think that college degrees are a bubble waiting to pop: a goodly amount of the email spam I get is hawking them, with subjects like “Get the degree you need,” and “Nominate for the degree” (what in the world does that even mean? I’ve never heard of “nominating” for a degree). The latest one is “Get any degree you want.” If that doesn’t devalue the notion of a degree, I don’t know what does.
No Honor Among Thieves
Good news from Kyopenhagen — things are falling apart:
Government ministers can’t agree on the best way to take money from their own citizens, give it to an opaque, above-the-law organization, and yet still control it; because, of course, with all that money comes power. Negotiators are skittish about how they can ensure that the money pledged will actually be paid into the pot, and if it does, who gets to dole out the funds. Everybody wants a piece of it, but nobody trusts anybody.
Well, they shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, as he notes, this is only a temporary setback. The leftists will regroup, and make other attempts in the future.
The Unraveling Continues
We now have substantial evidence, from several independent sources, that the data used as the basis for the IPCC report has been adjusted in undocumented ways, and those adjustments account for nearly all the warming we are told has been caused by humans.
The manufactured consensus continues to fall apart.
[Update early afternoon]
Just like that, the warming is gone:
Given all this manipulation and cherry-picking, you should ignore the press releases that will undoubtedly be coming from NOAA (when they return from snowy, cold Copenhagen), NASA, and Hadley about how this has been among the warmest years, and how the last decade was the warmest on record.
I guess that Heidi Cullen will be calling for the former head of meteorology of her employer to be “decertified.”
The Only Thing That Saves Us From These Tranzis
…is their sheer incompetence:
One has to admire the heartless indifference of the climate-change jet-set in the VIP enclosure to a lifelong toady like Borenstein. The rest of us, though, might draw the conclusion that, even if you think it a good idea to transfer trillions of dollars from the functioning part of the world to a transnational bureaucracy in an attempt to recalibrate the very heavens, these chaps might not be the ones you’d want running it.
But somehow, that thought never seems to occur to them.
“This Is Their Hajj”
Nancy goes to perform her hypocritical religious duties, at our expense:
While the final manifest remained in flux late yesterday, it was said to include more than two dozen members of Congress, several spouses and committee staffers.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) was among those planning to go because of his duties as chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, a staffer told The Post.
“We all know that Charlie Rangel is a big fan of subsidizing his vacation with taxpayer money, but the truly offensive aspect of this is Nancy Pelosi’s decision to bring the corrupt Harlem Democrat along for the ride,” said Republican spokesman Ken Spain.
You’d think that an event like Kyopenhagen would be an excellent place to set an example of doing a conference via teleconferencing. As Glenn says, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling us it’s a crisis start to act like it is.
Memo To Obama
Scolding never works. But it’s what you’d expect from an economic ignoramus like Barack Obama. And yes, Jerry Ford was, too.