Some thoughts on the old case in the context of the Mann suit.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Climate Parasites
That’s actually a much better rejoinder to “climate deniers” than global-warming Nazis:
The name “climate parasites” performs two jobs with exactly two words. It derails completely the enemy’s position that our side consists of people who are totally ignorant of climate science, or choose to ignore it. We acknowledge without hesitation that climate change is a proven fact of nature. The name also, however, marginalizes the other side by putting its members into the same category as indulgence sellers and rainmakers: opportunistic frauds who preyed on superstition and natural disasters respectively to separate honest people from their money.
Which is exactly what’s been happening, with Al Gore as king of the con artists.
[Via Judith Curry, who has additional interesting links on the collapse of the “consensus,” which was never anything but the fallacious band-wagon psychology.]
The Muir Russell Inquiry
Steve McIntyre continues to analyze Michael Mann’s claims of exoneration.
[Saturday-morning update]
Death By Food Pyramid
A favorable review by Michael Eades of what looks to be an interesting new book
I hadn’t realized the degree to which George McGovern was responsible, and how much he was influenced by Pritikin. They and their junk science are responsible for millions of premature deaths, from the seventies on, likely including my father’s almost thirty-five years ago.
The Global-Warming Nazis
Roy Spencer seems to have had enough:
I’m not talking about those who think we should be working toward new forms of energy to eventually displace our dependence of fossil fuels. Even I believe in that; after all, fossil fuels are a finite resource.
I’m instead talking about the extremists. They are the ones who are sure they are right, and who are bent on forcing their views upon everyone else. Unfortunately, the extremists are usually the only ones you hear from in the media, because they scream the loudest and make the most outrageous claims.
They invoke “consensus”, which results from only like-minded scientists who band together to support a common cause.
This authoritarianism tends to happen with an over-educated elite class…I have read that Nazi Germany had more PhDs per capita than any other country. I’m not against education, but it seems like some of the stupidest people are also the most educated.
So, as long as they continue to call people like me “deniers”, I will call them “global warming Nazis”.
I didn’t start this fight…they did. Yeah, somebody pushed my button.
Mine, too.
Bill Nye The Geography Guy
A report on his disastrous “debate” on Meet The Press.
John Kerry And Climate Change
Why he’s flat wrong:
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change, it is disturbing that “consensus science” will not acknowledge that such discrepancies are major problems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s beginning, that largely self-selected panel of scientists has embraced the notion that consensus on climate change is the necessary path to taking action and reducing man-made carbon emissions around the world. The consensus community uses this to push the view that “the science is settled” and hold up skeptics to ridicule, as John Kerry did on Sunday.
We are reminded of the dangers of consensus science in the past. For example, in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle. In this disease, brought on by a lack of vitamin C, the body loses its ability to manufacture collagen, and gums and other tissues bleed and disintegrate. These deaths were especially tragic because many sea captains and some ships’ doctors knew, based on observations early in the century, that fresh vegetables and citrus cured scurvy.
Nonetheless, the British Admiralty’s onshore Sick and Health Board of scientists and physicians (somewhat akin to the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) dismissed this evidence for more than 50 years because it did not fit their consensus theory that putrefaction (or internal decay) caused scurvy, which they felt could be cured by fresh air, exercise and laxatives.
“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.
Idiots. Murderous idiots in the name of an ideology.
The American Physical Society
Is it rethinking its climate-change statement?
It certainly should. As some who resigned in protest said, its previous one was scientifically irresponsible and driven by politics.
Snowboarding Women
…and unisex slopes:
The true feminist will blithely have it both ways, indifferent to the contradiction: The unisex course is sexist because it injures women and trying to protect women from injury is sexist. Likewise, feminists toggle at will between the position that there should be gender quotas for women in political positions, say, because females bring a special sensibility to political problems, and the position that men and women are identical in every way and thus that any disparities in outcomes — whether in advanced math and physics attainment or in the predilection for public debate — must be the result of sexism. As injuries build up for female combat soldiers, expect to see the same confused thinking. The Army will be blamed for not doing enough to protect females while also being pressured to pretend that females are the absolute equal of men and thus need no protection.
Leftists never have problems with that sort of cognitive dissonance.
Fuel Efficiency Standards For Trucks
Thoughts on the policy stupidity of it. As noted, truckers already have plenty of incentives to get their trucks as fuel-efficient as possible. This also applies to CAFE (which in turn is equally stupid to the new light-bulb rules).
[Update a while later]
The single-entry bookkeeping of the Left. This is particularly the case with carbon mitigation, which the warm mongers always ignore, or fantasize that it will be less than the cost of changes in the climate.