Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

So Let Me Get This Straight

99 Comments

The entire world has been assured that the “science was settled” that the last decade had been the hottest in recorded times, and that it was unprecedented, and it was surely caused by our breathing and SUV driving, and that we had to dramatically increase the cost of energy, reduce our own income, and keep the Third World in poverty (or transfer vast amounts of our own wealth to them), because the head of the Climate Research Unit kept a messy office?

You know, I keep a messy office, too, but then, I’ve never tried to remake the entire world on the basis of my analyses. (Off planet is a different story…)

This really is an amazing story. As I’ve been saying, the people who have been skeptical have been the true scientists, and the warm mongers betrayers of science, for power and politics.

And where is Al Gore? In fact, where is the American press?

[Wee-hour update]

More from The Times:

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

You don’t say.

And why isn’t anyone reporting on this on this side of the Pond?

[Monday morning update]

The WaPo is finally showing up to the party. Still no sign of the Paper Formerly Known As The Paper Of Record, though.

[Monday evening update — I’m home from Colorado…]

Climaquiddick (I wish that people would quit calling it Climategate…) reminds Instapundit of the Michael Bellesiles scandal. Me too.

Bellesiles, for those who don’t remember, was a historian at Emory who wrote a book making some, er, counterintuitive claims about guns in early America — in short, that they were much rarer than generally thought, and frequently owned and controlled by the government. Constitutional law scholars who expressed doubts about this were told to shut up by historians, who cited the importance of “peer review” as a guarantor of accuracy, and who wrapped themselves in claims of professional expertise.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Bellesiles had made it up. His work was based on probate records, and when people tried to find them, it turned out that many didn’t exist (one data set he claimed to have used turned out, on review, to have been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). It also turned out that Bellesiles hadn’t even visited some of the archives he claimed to have researched. When challenged to produce his data, he was unable to do so, and offered unpersuasive stories regarding why.

Well, on second thought, there are no parallels at all…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

More Bashing Of Private Enterprise

190 Comments

…by a supposed “conservative.” Charles Krauthammer continues his (unusually, for him) ill-informed hysteria over the new space policy:

…the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASA’s efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It’s too expensive. It’s too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.

Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative “clean energy.” Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.

As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can’t afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?

I just read that second paragraph, and shake my head in sorrow at the ignorance, not to mention the double standard. NASA has killed fourteen astronauts in the past quarter of a century. On what basis can he claim that private industry (which is highly motivated not to kill people, because it might put them out of business, whereas NASA is rewarded when it fails), will do worse?

And even ignoring their horrific cost, in what way are Ares and Orion “stepping stones” to anywhere, let alone Mars? No one has ever put forth a plausible scenario in which Orion is utilized for a Mars mission.

Meanwhile, a much more sensible piece can be found over at the Asia Times, which points out how ridiculous it is to worry about the Chinese (with quotes from Charles Lurio and Jeff Foust).

[Update a few minutes later]

Keith Cowing points out more historical ignorance on the part of the good doctor:

Um, check your facts next time. We had a 6 year gap between Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 and STS-1 in 1981. We had no way to send humans into space during that time. And, FWIW, between the end of Mercury and the beginning of Gemini, we had no access, and between Gemini 12 and Apollo 7 we had no access to space. Between STS-107 and STS-114 … and so on. Gaps are not a new thing.

And a continuation of the Program of Record would have guaranteed that the upcoming one would be the longest yet.

[Morning update]

Krauthammer link is fixed now, sorry.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust has a report on Lori Garver’s speech at the FAA meeting yesterday. It won’t satisfy the die-hard Apollo/Ares huggers of course, but it should appeal to more sensible people, including conservatives.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Team Obama Grows Stupid”

8 Comments

I disagree with Michael Barone:

The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics.

The 2008 campaign was an impressive achievement. So, in a negative way, is the 2009 legislative program that has left the Democrats in such woeful shape in 2010.

My disagreement is that I don’t think they were ever smart. They beat Hillary because there was a lot of antagonism toward her in her own party, and because her campaign was complacent, and “inevitable.” They beat McCain because people were angry at Republicans, he ran a lousy campaign, the economy melted down, the media were cheerleaders and refused to cover or vet him, and people wanted to feel good about voting for the black guy. And even with all that, he only got 53%. I don’t now, and never have subscribed to the notion that he “ran a brilliant campaign.” He was just the right guy in the right place at the right time. And now that the campaign is over (though you’d never know it from his rhetoric) and has to actually govern, something that he’s never had to do before, the shortcomings are apparent. Unfortunately for them, they believed too much in their own press releases, and the fawning media coverage. Fortunately for the country, he’s inoculated us against leftists for another generation.