Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate “Denial”

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Making nonsense of it:

It is clear from all this that Cook et al. are UNFCCC/IPCC ideologues. There is nothing wrong per se with ideology; it is the ideologues that are the problem – absence of doubt, intolerance of debate, appeal to authority, desire to convince others of the ideological “truth”, and a willingness to punish those that don’t concur. They need to look in the mirror and understand their own motivated reasoning.

Phil Plait is such a disappointment on this topic.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Habitats

2 Comments

NASA is finally taking a sensible approach to Congress’s unrealistic goals:

“What we’re trying to do is maximize commercial applications of these technologies while getting an impact for our requirements as well,” says Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems in the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) directorate at NASA headquarters. “There may be commercial applications for habitation in low Earth orbit at some point. We’d like to understand what industry thinks about that. At the same time we have real requirements for habitation in deep space, and there have been some commonalities in that.”

NASA (for now) has to waste billions on SLS/Orion, because it’s the law. They’ll continue to do so in the hope that it will satisfy the fools on the Hill, while doing sensible procurements for hardware they actually need to get beyond earth orbit.

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

Climate Change And Extreme Weather

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People like Seth Borenstein were excited to link to this paper yesterday.

“This new study helps get the actual probability or odds of human influence,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the research. “This is key: If you don’t like hot temperature extremes that we’re getting, you now know how you can reduce the odds of such events by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Lead author Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, and colleague Reto Knutti examined just the hottest of hot days, the hottest one-tenth of one percent. Using 25 different computer models. Fischer and Knutti simulated a world without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and found those hot days happened once every three years.

Then they calculated how many times they happen with the current level of heat-trapping gases and the number increases to four days. So three of the four are human caused, the team said.

This is crap science, because it’s based on crap models, that have been failing.

Interestingly, even Kevin Trenberth agrees with me:

“The paper is interesting and has some results that may be reasonably OK,” he said. “However, the paper is based almost entirely on models with little or no validation or relations to the real world. None of the models do precipitation realistically, and some are quite bad.”

You don’t say. Garbage in, garbage out.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Latest Clinton Scandals

55 Comments

Will they (finally) be the end of the Clintons?

I’d like to think so, but I’ve been disappointed repeatedly at the complete acceptance of criminality and corruption from the Clinton gang by their party. I can guarantee you of one thing: They think they’ll continue to get away with it, because they always have.

[Monday-afternoon update]

The fall of the House of Clinton?

I hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, she’s clearly lost Ron Fournier:

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that foreign companies and countries expected something in return for donating to the Clinton foundation rather than the countless other charities not connected to the U.S. presidency.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to know the Clintons violated ethics rules.

You don’t have to be a historian to know their ethical blind spot has decades-old roots.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to know this behavior contributes to the public’s declining trust in its leaders.

But to believe this is just about the actions of a book author, the mainstream media, and Republicans, it helps to be a Clinton.

Let’s hope that’s not enough this time.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Recent Democrat Fascism In Wisconsin

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Will the Supreme Court take the case?

Because both a separate federal ruling in a different case, and a state court ruling as part of the investigation, have halted the investigation for now, this Supreme Court decision will not directly affect the current status.

But, the nature of the case necessarily involves the underlying ability of states to regulate campaign coordination and how that ability interacts with First Amendment rights.

That is a huge issue, which the Justices may decide to reach as part of a ruling if they take the case. That’s what has Democrats so scared about this case — they fear it could turn into another case of the magnitude of Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court again upholds the constitutional rights of citizens to express views cooperatively.

Let’s hope.

[Update early afternoon]

What did the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel know, and when did it know it?

At the time of the raid, Archer saw an individual that she believed to be a reporter, standing in her lawn. But the question became: How would a reporter even know that Archer’s home was being raided? Someone had to tip the Journal-Sentinel off. But under Wisconsin law, disclosure of a search warrant’s issuance, prior to its execution, is a Class I felony and could also violate the judge’s secrecy order of the John Doe investigation itself.

People should be doing jail time for this. A lot of high-level Wisconsin Democrats. And maybe journalists, too.

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