Category Archives: Media Criticism

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

The Uncertainty Of Climate Sensitivity

18 Comments

…and its implications for the Paris “negotiations”:

In my previous post Climate sensitivity: lopping off the fat tail, I argued that it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend high values of ECS. However, the uncertainty is sufficiently large that we can’t really identify a meaningful ‘best value’ of sensitivity, or rule out really high values.

A key issue is that emerging estimates of aerosol forcing are considerably lower than what was used in the AR5 determinations of ECS, implying lower values of ECS than was determined by the AR5.

This uncertainty in ECS makes emission targets rather meaningless. It will be interesting to see how this uncertainty is factored into the Paris negotiations

Note, there are other papers on this general topic that are in the review process, I expect a spate of such papers to appear during the next month.

Paris is doomed to failure, thankfully.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Why Fiorina Outrages The Left

31 Comments

She has “exposed another socialist bone heap.” They don’t take well to having their mass murder exposed.

And the comparison with Solzhenitsyn is quite apt.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Remember that time the Left said that Fiorina lied about the video? I know you’ll find this shocking, but they lied.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

Thoughts on Planned Parenthood: Our summer of Omelas:

In 1973, award-winning science fiction author Ursula Le Guin published a very short story-essay titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It described a dreamlike summer festival in Omelas, a beautiful city that embodies everyone’s utopia, a magical place where everyone was joyful, a place where sorrow never touched the citizens or guests. But beneath that city lay a secret: all its joy and pleasure depended on the suffering and misery of a single lonely, abused child living in a filthy basement. If that child were saved, all of Omelas would fall, its beauty and perfection lost.

The citizens of Omelas, when they reached a certain age, were taken below to view the child so that they might understand their civilization. Most rationalized the suffering, as was encouraged: the child was mentally defective anyway, it could never be happy now if taken out, it was incapable of appreciating the beauty of the world like others. Only a few could not bear the truth, but instead of removing the child and Omelas be damned, they walked away, leaving for parts unknown.

America has had a summer of Omelas.

[Update a few minutes later[

Democrats: The party of abortion, not the party of women.

That link via Elizabeth Price Foley, who adds:

Moreover, never mind that Republicans are spearheading the effort to make birth control pills more widely available by classifying them as over-the-counter–something the Democrats and Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose. And never mind that Republicans wish to expand access to all kinds of women’s medical care–not just abortion and contraception–by expanding funding for community health centers. None of that fits with the Democrats’ “war on women” label, so it can’t be too widely discussed.

If the Republicans in Congress were smart (a big if, I know), they would start talking about the Democrats’ “war on birth control” and “war on women’s health.”

Don’t hold your breath. They’re stupid.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

More Junk Nutrition Science

5 Comments

This is appalling:

While eliminating saturated fats can improve heart health, a new study shows that it makes a difference which foods are used in their place. A study shows that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats and high-quality carbohydrates has the most impact on reducing the risk of heart disease. When saturated fats were replaced with highly processed foods, there was no benefit.

You don’t say.

In other words, you’re replacing good stuff with bad stuff, but when you replace the good stuff with less-terrible stuff, your results aren’t as bad. Pro tip to cardiologists: There is zero scientific evidence that eliminating saturated fat improves heart health.

And here’s a chef who’s an idiot.

Yes, restaurants are making you fat, but not because they’re serving you fat.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Filthy Meatbag Bodies On Mars

21 Comments

As Keith Cowing points out, the Planetary Society is in no hurry to put anyone on the surface of the Red Planet. They want to do Apollo to Mars, but take almost three and a half decades before the first boots on Mars, and almost four decades before long-term habitation. Though Firouz Naderi claims that keeping it under the cost limit makes it more likely, I’d say that it is doomed to failure. Something that takes that long, accomplishes so little, for so much money, is unsustainable in a democratic Republic. This is why Apollo to Mars is doomed in general. I’m discussing this in the Kickstarter project. We need to have a different approach, starting with an end to the phrase “space exploration” as the reason we send humans into space.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the link to the report. I’m reading it now, hoping it will have some useful cost data from Aerospace.

JPL Mars Mission Schedule

[Update a while later]

Even Chris Carberry recognizes that we won’t ever get another “Kennedy moment.” I’m not sure, though, how one “stays the course” to Mars, when there is no course.

[Late-morning update]

Over at Sarah Hoyt’s place NASA employee Les Johnson proposes (wait for it) Apollo to Mars.

It is not going to happen, and it should not happen.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Ending The War On Dietary Fat

More and more people are figuring out that the low-fat diet recommendations have been making things worse:

Now when we hold our annual sixteen-week Greater Fall River Fitness Challenge, the longest-running event of its kind in the country that draws over hundreds of people each year, we tell participants that they won’t see any significant weight loss unless they also make substantial changes in what they eat. A low-carb information and support group follows each weekly hour-long work-out, and our cooking demonstrations show people how they can switch to a low-carb lifestyle and lose weight without going hungry as they used to with low-fat, calorie-restricted diets.

Diabetic and overweight patients in a local hospital are already getting terrific results following a low-carb, high-fat approach. While it’s too soon to see measurable changes in overall obesity rates in our city with our new approach, we think we are now on the right track in advising our residents to stay away from low-fat products and diets and to incorporate healthy fats while limiting sugars and refined grains. For those who are already following this advice, we are seeing terrific results.

Interesting that they’re also backing off on the recommendation to exercise, at least with regard to weight loss.

Anyway, someone should tell Michelle Obama, on the slight hope that she’ll end her nationwide industrial-grade low-fat child abuse in the schools.

[Update late morning]

CSPI strikes back. Stupidly (as usual).

In a just world, CSPI would be sued for all of the premature deaths it has helped cause through its long-time promotion of junk science.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Did Hillary Do Wrong?

38 Comments

A summary from Sharyl Atkisson.

I think the commenter over there may be right. Obama wants this to hurt Hillary enough to keep her from becoming president, but he doesn’t want the emails related to Benghazi to be exposed to daylight.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not just about Hillary’s crimes and boobery, but the incredible ineptitude of the State Department:

The departing manager of the average pizza restaurant is handled more carefully than departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was. The Obama Administration was so utterly contemptuous of the public’s need to know, and the prerogatives of Congressional oversight committees, that it simply never gave any thought to securing emails the SecState wrote on behalf of the United States of America, until Congress and federal judges forced them to pay attention to the matter.

And I’m sure they’re very angry about it.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Two of Hillary’s scandals merge into one.

The email scandal is politically dangerous for Clinton because it supports the preconception of her as clannish, paranoid, and privileged. The Clinton Foundation scandal is toxic because it fosters the impression that, under Clinton, American diplomatic influence was a commodity available to the highest bidder, regardless of U.S. national interest. The convergence of those two scandals would doom the careers of Clinton and those who surrounded her all those Halcion years.

I wish. But she’s been getting away with lies, felonies and corruption for decades.

And the campaign is having trouble keeping its lies straight.

That’s always the problem with lying.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oopsie. More work emails from her “private” account. With David Petraeus.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Democrats starting to figure out what a terrible liar Hillary is.

They’d have no problem at all, as long as she was good at it, like Bill.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

“Truth”

5 Comments

Here’s the first review I’ve seen of Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett’s production of Mary Mapes’s fairy tale:

The problem I have with TRUTH is one of focus. While, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t say anything wrong, or leave important details out, it does emphasize a certain point of view strongly. There is a reasonable case to be made that this is because it is the side we haven’t heard. But there is more to it than that — it is trying to build a Hollywood narrative out of a decidedly messy situation by amplifying certain details and minimizing others. Plus, I think the real story here is one of journalistic failure. A focus on what causes us make mistakes and why we often can’t admit when we are wrong would have been much more interesting. That stuff is kind of in the atmosphere here, but isn’t emphasized.

I’ll illustrate my feelings with one of my favorite stories from science. In 1991, Andrew Lyne announced the discovery of the first planet around another star. He was scheduled to give a keynote address about it at the January 1992 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in front of thousands of astronomers. Yet when he got up, he instead explained that he was wrong. He had done some calculations incorrectly, and there was no planet. Rather than disdain, he got a standing ovation from the crowd. That’s exactly how science is supposed to work, and journalism too. But when Mary Mapes was confronted with fairly compelling evidence that she didn’t get things right, she didn’t seem to take a fresh look at the the facts in this new light, she doubled down on her original position. I think it was entirely justified that she was fired, even if the manner in which it was done was problematic.

A democracy depends on a well-informed public, and journalists have an extraordinary responsibility to be above reproach. In our two-party system, too often things degenerate into “sides” and scoring points on the other team. Yes it isn’t fair when one side can lie and change public opinion, and the other can make an honest mistake, face enormous penalties, and have other correct points ignored. But whining about what’s fair is a children’s game. Responsible adults who want to be taken seriously should do the upstanding thing and lead by example.

I’d note (as I always have to do) that “forgeries” is the wrong word, because it implies that there was something real to forge. They were fakes.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Ben Carson Exposes Taqiyya

29 Comments

But that’s hardly the end of it:

If some Muslims are willing to go to such lengths to eliminate the already downtrodden Christian minorities in their midst, does anyone doubt that a taqiyya-practicing Muslim presidential candidate might have no reservations about swearing on a stack of Bibles?

Precedents for such treachery litter the whole of Islamic history, and begin with the Muslim prophet himself.

It really is a different kind of religion. But the problem isn’t Muslims. The problem is Islam.

[Thursday-morning update]

Muslims say that sharia takes precedence over the Constitution. Well, at least they’re being honest.

Nothing to see here, move along.

[Bumped]