Category Archives: Science And Society

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Don’t Hold Your Breath

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It’s nice to see the New Scientist holding the Obama administration’s feet to the fire on its war on science:

“The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions,” Obama stated. Scientific information used by the federal government in making policy should be published, he added, and political officials should not suppress or alter scientific findings. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was given 120 days to draft a new policy on scientific integrity in government.

We’re still waiting for that policy to see the light of day. The precise reasons for the lengthy delay remain unclear – the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has even sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act, in an attempt to obtain documents that may explain the impasse. But it seems likely that the sticking point has been resistance from government officials who just don’t like the accountability that the new policy is supposed to usher in.

It’s less thrilling to see them perpetuate the myth that the Bush administration was worse:

Obama may be a friend of science, but many of the functionaries in his administration are rather less friendly. And if he fails to institute a sea change on the crucial issue of scientific integrity in government, there will be little to prevent a future President who sees little value in science from taking us back to the bad old days.

First, I’m unaware of any evidence that Barack Obama is a “friend of science,” except when the “science” fits his political agenda (e.g., AGW). And assuming that the “bad old days” is a reference to his predecessor, you’d think they might at least make the case that he was worse, but apparently they either can’t, or just think that we should accept it as an obvious given. I think that Obama’s record is much worse than George Bush’s, who, as far as I can tell, seemed to have acquired his “anti-science” creds based on little more than his policy to not provide government funding for embryonic stem-cell research, a decision that seems to have resulted in a flourishing of much more effective research in adult stem cells.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

That Was Then

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…this is now. And what a difference a year…or…something…makes. A compare and contrast of the New York Times’ ever-flexible standards of what we need to know:

“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”–New York Times, on the Climategate emails, Nov. 20, 2009

“The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. . . . The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.”–New York Times, on the WikiLeaks documents

These are our principles, and if you don’t like them, we have others.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Dead Green Treaty

…stinks up the room in Cancun. Which makes the economy-killing legislation passed by the morons in California (including moron-in-chief Schwarzenegger) even more pointless.

[Update a few minutes later]

An excerpt:

Our genius environmentalists came up with the idea that in order to make the treaty more palatable to US public opinion and therefore to the Senate, the US would assume an open-ended and eternal obligation to pay tens of billions of dollars a year to various developing world governments, however corrupt, incompetent, dictatorial and unfriendly these might be. Iran, Cuba, and North Korea would get money just like Yemen, Syria and Sudan. In exchange, these countries along with India and China would accept restrictions on their carbon output that are significantly less drastic than those to be imposed on the US.

Who could possibly object to a smart plan like this? What US Senator wouldn’t love to defend a vote to force taxpayers to subsidize Iran while giving China permanent business advantages over the US? Surely Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would find nothing to attack here. Getting two thirds of the Senate to ratify a no-brainer like this would be a cakewalk.

This is the fruit of the gigantic brains of the Great Gurus of Green. This is the bright shining idea at the core of the UN process: that US opposition to Kyoto could be overcome by requiring the US to pay tens of billions of dollars in Green Danegeld to the third world every year. And the people who thought of this had Big Degrees from Name Schools! We know, because they keep telling us, that they are smarter than the rest of us and they understand complex systems better than we do. These are the geniuses to whom we are to entrust ever greater control over ever larger swathes of the global economy because, after all, they see so clearly and so far.

The world’s in the very best of hands.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

On The Anniversary Of Climaquiddick

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…the watermelons show their true colors:

Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. This is the theme of my forthcoming book on the controlling, poisonously misanthropic and aggressively socialistic instincts of the modern environmental movement. So how very generous that two of that movement’s leading lights should have chosen the anniversary of Climategate to prove my point entirely.

I think he’s right. This nonsense is politically dead in the US.