Category Archives: Business

Business, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate Reporting

6 Comments

It’s a hot mess.

[Late-morning update]

A media round up, and some thoughts, from Judith Curry, on the State of the Union:

what is wrong with President Obama’s statements as cited above?

  • His statement about humans having exacerbated extreme weather events is not supported by the IPCC
  • The Pentagon is confusing climate change with extreme weather (see above)
  • ‘Climate change is real’ is almost a tautology; climate has always changed and always will, independently of anything humans do.
  • His tweet about ‘97%’ is based on an erroneous and discredited paper [link]

As for ‘Denial from Congress is dangerous’, I doubt that anyone in Congress denies that climate changes. The issue of ‘dangerous’ is a hypothetical, and relates to values (not science).

And speaking of the ‘deniers’ in Congress, did anyone spot any errors in the actual science from Senator Inhofe’s rebuttal?

The apparent ‘contract’ between Obama and his administrators to play politics with climate science seems to be a recipe for anti science and premature policies with negative economic consequences that have little to no impact on the climate.

BUt the important thing is that they line the pockets of his campaign contributors.

Maybe some day, in a future administration, we can have a grown up conversation about climate change (natural and human caused), the potential risks, and a broad range of policy responses.

Let’s hope.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Full Employment

4 Comments

No, we’re nowhere close to it:

Measured against where these people expected the economy to be at this point seven years ago, the economy is indeed awful. Millions of people who should have jobs don’t, and those who do have jobs are working for much lower wages than would be the case in a healthy economy.

This is the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. For most of the same reasons.

Note, I don’t agree with Baker’s recommendations, though.

[Update a few minutes later]

Of 3000 counties, only 65 have recovered from the recession.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, War Commentary

American Sniper

13 Comments

Kyle Smith liked it.

Its success will really piss off the Hollywood Left, after all their box-office bombs, after which they said Americans “just don’t like movies about the war.” No, they just don’t like anti-American movies.