Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Gaia Refuses To Get With The Program

63 Comments

And the warm-mongers aren’t happy about it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Environmentalists exposed as liars. I’m shocked, shocked I say.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more on the apparent fraud at the Climate Research Unit.

The problem is that the files and emails seem just too good to be true. A number of files seem to be smoking guns — revealing how to resist Freedom of Information Act requests for their data (which would both be scientific misconduct and actually illegal); long-term marketing plans on how to push the climate-change agenda; and discussions of how to pressure peer-reviewed journals to stop accepting papers that disagree with the “accepted” view of global warming.

In other words, just what the skeptics have been suggesting for years. It seems just too neat, and we don’t have independent verification of where the files came from. Someone who is willing to hack might also be willing to create fakes.

But then, the whole package is very large — 63 megabytes — and seems to be very internally consistent. Several people have already corroborated a number of the emails as being ones they wrote or received. The package also includes substantial data and computer programs, which are being explored as this is being written.

The best we can say right now is that we should keep our eyes on this. If these files are eventually corroborated and verified, it is a bombshell indeed — evidence that there has been a literal conspiracy to push the anthropogenic climate change agenda far beyond the science.

I wish I could say that I was surprised. Actually, I am, a little. I wouldn’t have thought they’d be this blatant about it, but it’s been clear for years that this was being driven by a non-science agenda.

As noted in comments, Jerry Pournelle has some thoughts today:

sounds to me as if climatologists are now admitting they have not the faintest idea of what is going on. I have a remedy for them. Study the data and refine the models. Stop assuming you already know the answers and start looking for better models….

But that’s no fun. It doesn’t give them an excuse to implement socialism via the green door.

[Afternoon update]

Here is more from James Delingpole:

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true, it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

What I find delicious about this is (as always) the toxic brew of self-righteousness and hypocrisy. I don’t want to hear anyone, ever again, tell me that it’s “just about the science.”

[Mid-afternoon update]

A lot of discussion over at Slashdot.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer

7 Comments

…on the lunacy of Eric Holder:

…why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

…Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, (accused) mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

This will not end well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

And speaking of the corrupt political hack running the Department of Injustice, Andrew Breitbart has a warning: investigate ACORN properly, or I’ll release a lot more tapes just before the election next year. You know, I think he has them by the short hairs. I wonder if they’re too stupid to realize it, though.

And in a sane world, Breitbart, Giles and O’Keefe would be getting a Pulitzer.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, this is precious, too. Breitbart totally pwned a hack columnist at the LA Times as well.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Making History

6 Comments

I’m not a big fan of Lindsey Graham, but once in a while he’s not a total waste of oxygen:

One would have thought that Holder would have been prepared for this obvious question. That he wasn’t just shows what an incompetent, political hack he really is.

[Update a few minutes later]

Andy McCarthy, the anti-Holder, expands on the subject:

The lawyer’s stock in trade is precedent. Whether you’re a prosecutor or any other lawyer faced with a policy question, the first thing you want to know is what the law says on the subject: Has this come up before? Are there prior cases on point? What have the courts had to say? Those are the first-order questions — always.

…How could Holder possibly not know the answer to this fundamental question — how could he, in fact, be stumped by it. If he studied and agonized over this decision as he says he did, this would have been the first issue he’d have considered: the fact that there was no legal precedent for what he wanted to do. Or, put another way, if there was a single case that supported Holder’s decision, it would have been the only case we’d have been hearing about — from DOJ, the academy, and the media — for the last ten months.

Hack. The country’s in the very best of hands.

[Update a few minutes later]

The insanity grows. Senator Leahy says it’s OK, we don’t need to interrogate bin Laden.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

George W. Hoover

4 Comments

Ilya Somin says that George Bush should, finally, stop giving a bad name to free markets:

Bush’s belated support for free markets follows in Hoover’s footsteps. After leaving office in 1933, Hoover wrote books and articles defending free markets and criticizing the Democrats’ New Deal. Some of his criticisms of FDR were well-taken. Many New Deal policies actually worsened and prolonged the Great Depression by organizing cartels and increasing unemployment. But by coming out as a free market advocate, the post-presidential Hoover actually bolstered the cause of interventionism because he helped cement the incorrect impression that he had pursued free market policies while in office, thereby causing the Depression. Bush’s post-presidential conversion creates a similar risk: it could solidify the already widespread impression that he, like the Hoover of myth, pursued laissez-faire policies which then caused an economic crisis.

What should Bush now do if he genuinely wants to help the free market cause? The best thing would be to take up economist David Henderson’s half-joking suggestion that he “express his regret at nationalizing airport safety, carrying out illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, raiding medical marijuana clinics, bailing out General Motors, AIG and other companies, and socializing prescription drugs for the elderly [the biggest new government program from the 1960s until the present financial crisis].” Bush could also point out that he advocated an ideology of “compassionate conservatism” that included vastly expanded government, and an “ownership society” that (in his own words) involved “us[ing] the mighty muscle of the federal government” to incentivize dubious mortgages of the kind that helped cause the financial collapse of 2008. The greatest contribution Bush can now make to free market policies is to dispel the impression that he pursued them while in office.

Unfortunately, as Somin points out, the likelihood that he will admit his perfidy to markets, or the disastrous nature of many of his domestic policies, is pretty low, so the best thing he can do for free markets now is to just shut up.

Political Commentary

Political Trouble Brewing

3 Comments

…for the Donkeys:

A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.

Obama’s own popularity among independents has fallen significantly, too. A CBS News poll Tuesday showed the president’s approval rating among unaligned voters falling to 45 percent — down from 63 percent in April.

The marks are finally catching on to the game. But this was the part I found most interesting:

Michael Dimock, a pollster for the Pew Research Center — which reported in a new survey that only 45 percent of independents want their own representative to return to Congress — also believes Democrats have suffered for their inability to move the ball on key agenda items such as health care.

Emphasis mine. Usually, people say they hate Congress, but think their own representative isn’t like the rest of the bums to be thrown out. When they say they want to replace even their own, there’s a revolution in the making, and it won’t be a happy one for the majority party. And as for the nonsense that Demos are “suffering for their inability to move the ball on key agenda items such as healthcare,” no. They are suffering because they’re overreaching on those items. But I hope they continue to believe this fantasy. It will make the blowback all the greater a year from now.

[Afternoon update]

When reality catches up with rhetoric:

We are left with two conclusions. 1) A very inexperienced president has discovered that all the easy, Manichean campaign rhetoric of 2008 does not translate well into actual governance. 2) Obama is in a race to push a rather radical, polarizing agenda down the throat of a center-right country before the country wakes up and his approval ratings hit 40 percent.

We may see one of two things happen: Either the country will move more to the left in four years than it has in the last 50; or Obama will take down with him both the Democratic Congress and the very notion of responsible liberal governance, thereby achieving a Jimmy Carter–type legacy.

My money’s on number two.

Political Commentary, Space

Prepare To Be Shocked To Your Core

21 Comments

Bob Zubrin is poo pooing the LCROSS lunar water findings:

While the results obtained from the LCROSS mission are of some scientific interest, it needs to be understood that the amount of water discovered was extremely small. The 30 m crater ejected by the probe contained 10 million kilograms of regolith. Within this ejecta, an estimated 100 kg of water was detected. That represents a proportion of 10 parts per million, which is a lower water concentration than that found in the soil of the driest deserts of the Earth. In contrast, we have found continent sized regions on Mars, which are 600,000 parts per million, or 60% water by weight.

…For the coming age of space exploration, Mars compares to the Moon as North America compared to Greenland in the previous age of maritime exploration. Greenland was closer to Europe, and Europeans reached it first, but it was too barren to sustain substantial permanent settlement. In contrast, North America was a place where a new branch of human civilization could be born. The Moon is a barren island in the ocean of space; Mars is a New World. Mars is where the challenge is, it is where the science is, it is where the future is. That is why Mars should be our goal.

Let’s ignore the fact that NASA disagrees that the moon is drier than earth’s driest deserts, in light of the latest findings. As Michael Turner notes in comments, the problem with that analogy is that there is a huge difference in travel time and expense between the moon and Mars, whereas they were essentially equivalent between Greenland and the rest of North America, in terms of the technology required to get there.

Is there more water, easier to process on Mars than on the moon? Sure, as long as you’re on Mars. Therein lies the rub. This sort of reminds me of the old joke about the guy searching for his car keys in the street at night. Someone walks up and asks if he can help. “Where did you lose them?” “A couple blocks over that way.” “Well, why are you looking here?” “There’s better light.” I say sort of, because it’s not clear what are the keys and what is the light in this analogy.

Anyway, if we can use lunar water to facilitate trips to Mars, isn’t that a desirable goal? Not to Bob, who wants to go Right Now, which would be fine if he were doing it with his own money. He understandably fears that lunar activities will prove a diversion from The One True Goal, in both money and time, as ISS has. But whether or not that would be the case is a function of the reason for the lunar base. If its focus is on utilizing resources (and indeed, if it has a focus, which iSS never did, other than as a jobs program for NASA and later the Russians), there is no need for it to be a diversion — it could in fact be a major stepping stone to not just Mars but the entire solar system. On the other hand, the way that NASA currently plans to get back to the moon (the “Program of Record”) would almost certainly bear out Bob’s worst fears. But the argument shouldn’t be about destinational priorities; it should be about the most cost-effective means of developing the capability to affordably go wherever we want.