Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Fallout Continues

21 Comments

Several physicists are asking the American Physical Society to rescind its 2007 endorsement of AGW:

In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)

If I were a working scientist, I would be most insulted by the insinuation, which seems to be their current main defense, that “everyone does it,” and “this is the way that science works.” I’ve seen blog commenters try this game, and I think it’s an outrageous slur on the thousands of scientists who actually do science with integrity.

[Update a few minutes later]

Roger Simon has a plausible theory as to why the president delayed his trip to Copenhagen. It buys him time to decide not to go at all, as the whole enterprise (finally and thankfully) begins to unravel.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Like me, Eric Raymond is popping the corn. I think we’ll see a lot more of this:

My favorite recent entry on the CRU mob is a screed from a professor of mathematics in Canada: “All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.”

Now that the curtain has been pulled back, and the great Oz revealed as a fraud, expect a lot of previously cowed people to speak up, and even pile on. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s no less than they’ll deserve.

[Update a few minutes later]

The (still) faithful gather in Copenhagen:

…it’s already clear that being here during the next few days is going to be very much like attending some kind of massive religious gathering. The faithful — over 16,000 strong — are here, of course, for the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, a.k.a. COP15 (“COP” as in Copenhagen), at which they supposedly hope to achieve a provisional international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus rescue our beloved blue planet from the fate envisioned in any number of bad Roland Emmerich movies.

I say “supposedly” because at this point, lacking a polygraph, it’s hard to know for sure what any of these professional climate folks really think or believe or aspire to.

Oh, I think we can guess.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

More Evidence That These Are Religious Fanatics

11 Comments

After doing yeoman’s duty in going through the CRU emails, Steve Hayward notes:

How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them?

As the title says…

And as Mark Steyn notes at the link, the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin has been excommunicated.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

A View From Inside The Sausage Factory

6 Comments

…from someone who escaped:

In Washington, he used his BlackBerry to determine the bailout sum presented to Congress. His arithmetic: “We have $11 trillion residential mortgages, $3 trillion commercial mortgages. Total $14 trillion. Five percent of that is $700 billion. A nice round number.”

Looking back, he says, he is more confident about the two-by-sixes.

“Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air,” Kashkari recalls, wheeling toward the hex nuts and the bolts. “It was a political calculus. I said, ‘We don’t know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?’ ‘No way,’ Hank shook his head. I said, ‘Okay, what about 700 billion?’ We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”

I’m glad he got out, and wish him well in his new life in California. But it doesn’t instill confidence in the government, nor should it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Climaquiddick

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California style:

Crafty use of statistics, lack-of-transparency, wild projections about future calamity requiring government intervention now…Hmmmm.

If all of this is sounding familiar there’s a reason. Stefan Rahmstorf is one of the CRU e-mail clatch and a contributor to Real Climate. For instance, here is an e-mail in which he is desperately seeking help writing a reply to a critic.

Based on this alarmist study, Schwarzenegger and the State of California have put together…a…video which includes the Rahmstorf’s prediction of a 4 foot sea level rise by 2100 and images of San Francisco inundated by rising seas.

By the way, the California Energy Commission which is pushing this is the same group that outlawed future sales of my TV a few weeks ago. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it since TVs don’t work well underwater anyway.

I’ll be OK. We’re a couple dozen feet above at least, with dunes between us and the beach a mile and a half away.