Archive for the ‘ManBearPig’ Category

“Don’t Get Mad, Get Even”

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

Frank Rich of the New York Times…makes an ass out of himself yet again.

The frantic and fruitless nationwide search for the president’s temper is now our sole dependable comic relief from the tragedy in the gulf. Only The Onion could have imagined the White House briefing last week where a CBS News correspondent asked the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, if he had “really seen rage from the president” and to “describe it.” Gibbs came up with Obama’s “clenched jaw” and his order to “plug the damn hole.” (Thank God he hadn’t settled for “darn.”) This evidence did not persuade anyone, least of all Spike Lee, who could be found on CNN the next night begging the president, “One time, go off!”

Not going to happen. Obama will never unleash the anger of the antagonists in “Do the Right Thing” or match James Carville’s rebooted “ragin’ Cajun” shtick. That’s not who Obama is. If he tried to go off, he’d look ridiculous. But the debate over how to raise the president’s emotional thermostat is not an entirely innocuous distraction. It allows Obama to duck the more serious doubts about his leadership that have resurfaced along with BP’s oil.

Unlike his unflappable temperament, his lingering failings should and could be corrected. And they must be if his presidency is not just to rise above the 24/7 Spill-cam but to credibly seize the narrative that Americans have craved ever since he was elected during the most punishing economic downturn of our lifetime. We still want to believe that Obama is on our side, willing to fight those bad corporate actors who cut corners and gambled recklessly while regulators slept, Congress raked in contributions, and we got stuck with the wreckage and the bills. But his leadership style keeps sowing confusion about his loyalties, puncturing holes in the powerful tale he could tell.

His most conspicuous flaw is his unshakeable confidence in the collective management brilliance of the best and the brightest he selected for his White House team — “his abiding faith in the judgment of experts,” as Joshua Green of The Atlantic has put it. At his gulf-centric press conference 10 days ago, the president said he had “probably had more meetings on this issue than just about any issue since we did our Afghan review.” This was meant to be reassuring but it was not. The plugging of an uncontrollable oil leak, like the pacification of an intractable Afghanistan, may be beyond the reach of marathon brainstorming by brainiacs, even if the energy secretary is a Nobel laureate. Obama has yet to find a sensible middle course between blind faith in his own Ivy League kind and his predecessor’s go-with-the-gut bravado.

By now, he also should have learned that the best and the brightest can get it wrong — and do. His economic advisers predicted that without the stimulus the unemployment rate might reach 9 percent — a projection that was quickly exceeded even with the stimulus and that has haunted the administration ever since. Other White House geniuses persuaded the president to make his fateful claim in early April that “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills” — a particularly specious (indeed false) plank in the argument for his spectacularly ill-timed expansion of offshore oil drilling. The Times reported last week that at the administration meetings leading to this new drilling policy the subject of the vast dysfunction at the Minerals Management Service, the agency charged with regulating the drilling, never even came up.

That was pretty reasonable. I’m so glad the community of hardcore liberals won’t be listening to any of it. They’ve been having their fantasies about President Obama getting mad at least since September of ’09, and this accident with the oil spill has kicked it into high gear.

This is what democrat defeat is made of. “Life would be wonderful if only our guy would become angry!” He should kick something. No, he should yell and swear. No, he needs to rip people’s arms out of their sockets. Oh no, he needs to get all big and green and tear his shirt to shreds.

It plays in Manhattan but not in Peoria. Normal people, with no party allegiance but who decide elections, look at this stuff…they spend maybe a second or two trying to figure out how this relates to an oil leak a mile beneath the ocean’s surface. And they quite sensibly say, “You people are whacked in the head. We can’t afford to let you decide anything.”

We have intellectual children doing the work of grown-ups. Few things illustrate this as starkly as when the kiddies start to debate the proper display of anger, in situations in which anger does nothing to solve anything.

Here’s where the Frank Rich trolley really comes off the tracks.

Obama’s excessive trust in his own heady team is all too often matched by his inherent deference to the smartest guys in the boardroom in the private sector. His default assumption seems to be that his peers are always as well-intentioned as he is. The single biggest mistake he has made in managing the gulf disaster was his failure to challenge BP’s version of events from the start. The company consistently understated the spill’s severity, overestimated the progress of the repair operation and low-balled the environmental damage. Yet the White House’s designated point man in the crisis, Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard, was still publicly reaffirming his trust in the BP chief executive, Tony Hayward, as recently as two weeks ago, more than a month after the rig exploded.

It’s not that his conclusions are unreasonable, Lord knows there’s enough blame to go around. It is his premises. They scare the hell out of me.

Consider what is being presumed here. BP does not have good intentions, but Barack Obama does. Perhaps these are both true. And to give him proper credit, he did say “seems to be.” But where does he ever subject them to serious question, and upon which facts did he decide them?

This is part of a very old and very troubling mindset among American liberals. If you ideologically lean toward the hard-left and you are on a government payroll of any kind…well then, the discussion is over. Your motives are not to be challenged, they are as pure as the driven snow.

BP’s record, as Rich goes on to point out, is pretty awful. That is why they are subject to government oversight and audits. Our liberals made us do it, you see; they figure if you work for an oil company you must want to dump toxic sludge into our waterways. They saw it on Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Therefore, whatever an oil company wants to do, we have to get our well-intentioned government people to say it’s alright before it can proceed.

And they did say it was alright.

This is the kind of logical cul de sac in which you find yourself trapped, when you think like a child while confronting grown-up issues like this. We’ll just put super-good, super-well-intentioned people in charge of things, and then everything will work all wonderfully. Until they don’t, then we have to do it again. The government regulators, they must have been well-intentioned but sleepy.

The idea that they could all be Looking Out For Number One, and also somewhat well-intentioned, just doesn’t even enter the realm of consideration.

The point is, this is ultimately why liberal policies don’t work. They rely on putting “Perfect People” in charge of everything, and when things still don’t work out the thing to do is put “More Perfect People” in charge of the Perfect People.

And to get mad.

How does an adult handle it? Well, funny you should ask. I’m looking at Allahpundit’s column in which he “gulps” that, in light of the disaster involving the BP oil spill, 51% now oppose new offshore drilling…

Opposing Offshore DrillingIt’s a poll of adults, not registered or likely voters, but there’s no reason to doubt the trend. A Gallup poll taken last week showed a double-digit reversal in just two months between whether energy production or the environment should be a higher priority for America. A Quinnipiac poll from mid-May showed 53 percent support for continuing offshore drilling, but that was before “top kill” failed. Now, per CBS, the majority is pointing the other way.

And I don’t see what all the gulping is about. Offshore drilling is becoming increasingly unpopular; of course it is, I’d be wondering about peoples’ sanity if it were not.

My grown-up take on it is this: Lots of people say offshore drilling is too risky, so fine. Move the drilling inland. Drill on land. Open the Bakken, open ANWR. Any environmentalists get in the way, show ’em a picture of an oil-covered pelican from the Gulf, then kick ’em out of the way just like “The Rock” Obama. Maybe give ’em a taste of their own medicine: “Oh if you get in my way you must want more dead birds,” something like that. Can’t say they don’t have it comin’.

A majority of respondents, a growing one, agrees with this approach right? Off shore drilling is too dangerous. Let’s do the environmentally conscientious thing, tell the environmentalists to get lost, and drill on land where we can manage whatever mishaps take place.

Then we don’t have to worry about getting mad. We don’t have to worry about getting even. We don’t have to put “perfect” people in charge of things or wonder about what their intentions are.

Unless I’m missing something here?

Hay, That Just Might Work

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Via Gerard: Looks like the makings of a good idea. I wasn’t aware hay had this property.

Well look: She wanted “an Einstein out there” to speak up. Sometimes twits get what they want, too. And sometimes an Einstein doesn’t look like Einstein.

Update: Aw, double-dog dammit. The twit took down her video. “Removed because of a copyright claim.” Copyright claim my ass. For those who didn’t make the acquaintance of it, it was a modernized version of the famous “Leave Britney Alone!” video which you can find here (naughty language warning). Not that it was trying to be that…similar content, similar intent, similar coherence factor, similarly pathetic.

This is a little bit of scope creep, but there is a lesson here. The twit put up a video so everyone could see how concerned she was about the oil spill…and therefore, what a wonderful decent person she was. Tree huggers do not want us “all” to care about Mother Earth. Tree huggers want differentials, they want ranking, they want relativity. They want to be better than other people.

She found out there was a different opinion about here in the real world, regarding her overly-emotional “Leave Mother Earth Alone!” ravings. And just like that, the clip becomes sacred intellectual property. You’re not allowed to see it.

So the lesson is: Environment-related passions are a lot more about destruction than creation. Their kind envisions a utopia. One in which “little people” are allowed to populate and thrive, so that the environmentalists can ensconce themselves at the top of a pyramid, smug and self-satisfied in the notion that they are better than most everybody else. But at the same time, their expectation doesn’t allow for any diversity when it comes to ideas. You’re only supposed to form the opinions they want you to form. So to create the world they want, we’ll have to destroy a lot more things than we’ll have to preserve or create. They’re really genocidal and they don’t know it.

Another lesson that emerges from this: Our tort system, we see through our copyright system, is rapidly becoming infested with bullshit. It is becoming a legal profession specializing in pretending things are the opposite of what they really are. And the central tenet of it is morphing into one of “That which has been seen can, indeed, be unseen if we say so.” Anyone who says something stupid and then realizes it later, all of a sudden enjoys the protection of the expanding umbrella of trademark dilution.

This is not a good thing. There is a Darwinism of ideas that needs to take place here, as people are rightfully embarrassed for having said stupid things. Now it isn’t taking place. Instead, we have the “memory holes” of 1984. The video has been pulled because of a “copyright claim”; we have always been at war with EastAsia; the chocolate ration has always been 22 grams.

Someone needs to follow YouTube around picking up the dribblings. Sort of “Google-cache” these videos that are found to be inconvenient and therefore “violate copyright claims.” Without that, people who can’t think coherently are allowed to send up trial balloons involving whatever absurd nonsense they wanna float on up, and if it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. There’s no incentive toward thinking like a grown-up.

Back to the subject at hand: Gerard asks the question of whether the government will hire these Einsteins? It’s a good question. There are indeed those who say that whatever is simple and makes sense, is summarily ruled out. I guess it’s up to our “leaders” to prove that dictum right or wrong.

This is Your Brain; This is Your Brain on Drama

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

High drama kills brain cells. Let all who doubt these wise words of mine, feast their eyes (hat tip to Boortz).

Too much attention received, too many movies watched involving mopey, dopey kids with trembling lips delivering tearjerker speeches to grown-ups resulting in a wonderful (fictitious) outcome.

“I’m supposed to be full of hope”; that would imply she voted in our most recent elections, and I’ll lay a few bucks on where her vote went.

If you voted the same way, remember this: Her vote counts just as much as yours. Maybe you think that’s alright because she came to the same conclusion you did…but she’s still a moron. If she makes a right decision about something, that’s a product of random chance. So you’re just as well off sharing your vote with a roulette wheel. And there are quite a few people running around thinking that’s how it should work. That, ultimately, is the problem. Lots of ideas about the way things should work, very little reckoning with consequences. They’re part of this problem, she’s part of this problem. Oh yes, she & they put on a great show of pretending to think about consequences. But they don’t. Not really.

Which is a great segue into this bit I saw yesterday about flaccid brains.

If government spending is growing faster than gross domestic product (GDP), can the resulting deficit problem be solved by: (A) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending, (B) increasing tax rates, (C) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending and increasing tax rates? If you answered A, you have a strong brain and can go to the head of the class. If you answered B, you have a flaccid brain and will need to repeat the class. I will get back to the C students later.

People with flaccid brains have a hard time understanding the consequences of actions, and they tend to treat variables as constants (e.g., I know how to drive, so I should be able to drive drunk). As we know from both physics and behavioral science, almost every action causes some reaction. Flaccid brains, for various reasons, have a hard time understanding this basic principle of nature. Hence, they rarely do real cost-benefit analyses or think about the long run.

An example of a flaccid brain is that which occupies the skull of Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, who, in a hysterical reaction to the Gulf oil spill, wants to shut down all offshore drilling. As damaging as the spill is, one major accident every 40-plus years (the Santa Barbara channel spill was in 1969) is something we can live with, given that we get about one-third of our oil from offshore platforms, which provide an enormous benefit to our economy and to everyone who drives.

Hehe, that’s a good wind-up and smack-down. And it’s an excellent description of the problem: The “flaccid brain” only reckons with one side of the argument rather than engaging in a balanced evaluation of both sides. It cannot competently walk a tightrope.

Nelson, and this ditz, would get along like bacon & eggs.

It Finally Happend to Me

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Well folks, it finally happened to me. I used to live inside grocery stores and Wal-Marts and Targets, and a few years ago I got this magical girlfriend who runs out and takes care of our regular retail needs…so these days, I sometimes have trouble remembering how to shop. I get out of practice.

What I’m sure happened to you some time ago, finally happened to me. New socks and underwear and bicycle pump in hand, my purchase completed, I was wondering what my items were doing down there while the cashier waited on the next customer. I was also wondering where the plastic bags were. When I bagged-my-own, I was diplomatically scolded that those reusable items cost money and if I wanted one I should’ve said so.

Sometime in middle age, I suppose we all get this feeling that the world’s gone all wonky on its axis…that if we were to be sealed up in a block of ice for a century, or two, or ten, when we were thawed out we wouldn’t have any tougher of a time re-integrating in what we find there, compared to the troubles we’re having right fucking now. Everything that should be down is up, inside is out, wet is dry…

…the global warming scolds were caught red handed falsifying their science. Nevertheless, I still have to toddle off to my car with a double-armload of bicycle pumps and underwear hoping I don’t drop anything. Assholes.

I’m pleased with the way I handled it. After all, the next customer in line was already being waited-on; ringing up a cloth bag for fifteen cents would have broken my “don’t be a dick” rule. (Yes, I do have one.)

So I shrugged off my embarrassment, smiled as broadly as I could, and said “That’s quite alright — whatever it takes to SAVE THE PLANET.” My sarcasm was dry. Not too obvious; you almost had to be looking for it to see it. Almost. It was a perfect balance if I dare say so myself.

And I intend to keep handling this that way. Point out the craziness by taking it absolutely, positively, one-hundred-and-ten percent seriously. YES! The planet is four billion years old, but it will not see another tomorrow if I use up a single plastic baggie to hold my newly purchased knickers. We have to SAVE the PLANET. Togetherwecandothis!!

D’JEver Notice? LIV

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Looks like, for the time being, it’s all about healthcare-healthcare-healthcare, and cap-n-trade cap-n-trade cap-n-trade. As soon as they’re all done “fixing” the former they’ll direct their energies toward the latter.

Some time ago, I wrote a letter to my oh-so-stylish wrinkled-up aging-hippie hardcore left-wing female senators, and I inquired of them courteously — because my curiosity was and is sincere — if the motto of the current Congress isn’t “Our approach to any given problem is to make sure no one can make a profit providing a solution to it”? There is no one particular phenomenon that inspires this observation of mine; it is a sumptuous buffet of events, actions and outlandish quotes. About S&L bailouts, about executive bonuses, about auto manufacturers, et al. The house fire may be put out, but if the fireman made a profit then this is a disaster. If the fire roars onward and engulfs a neighborhood, everything’s fine as long as neither the fireman nor anybody else is making any money. That is the real measure of success.

We see it right now in the health care debate. While I wait endlessly to see one more democrat march on to a stage and say something about bringing medicine and treatment to people who really need these things — remember when the air was thick with the catchphrases? It wasn’t that long ago — I have to listen to dire proclamations about the inadequacy of the status quo, things must change, because people are entering the medical field for the wrong reasons. To make a buck! That’s why we need this health care “plan.” Who cares what drugs are being invented. Who cares about the advance of technology. These positions are profitable and they should not be.

Anyway, sometime before the nation’s 234th birthday just a few short months from now, the health care thing will be resolved one way or the other. And then we will — most assuredly — move on to those awful carbon emissions heating up the planet. Of course we will. It will be July, and you know what happens in July; we’ll talk about the weather. This spot will have its warmest July 1st ever…that other spot will have its coolest. Both of these events will be disasters, and blamed squarely on you-know-what.

My d’Jever-Notice-moment is in regard to that particular issue. The “All’s Good As Long As We’re All Non-Profit” paradigm seems to sharply overturn, here. Carbon “vouchers,” the cap-and-trade “marketplace,” the “green jobs.” The good people who were just a few moments ago using profit as a perfect litmus test for shenanigans a-goin’ down, fervently believing that any and all free trade is evil by its very nature — suddenly they’re extolling the virtues of this plan or that plan, because “it makes good financial sense.” Suddenly I hear all these buzzwords that would not have worked before. Robust. Thriving. Bustling. Soaring. Employment. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Skyrocketing. Millions-and-billions. Investing.

Perhaps if those buzzwords were more popular within other topics, the economy would be looking a tad more cheerful right about now. Maybe, what we really need to do to make some money around here, is to simply…allow ourselves to.

Cleaner Emissions Fail

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Via Moonbattery.

Climate Science Road Tour?

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Conflict.

It’s been a couple months of seriously bad PR for climate science, both due to unfortunate errors made by scientists and (okay, mostly) a well-funded noise machine intent on preserving the status quo at any cost. So how can climate scientists dig themselves out of the negative publicity trench and help reeducate the public on the dangers of climate change? The answer’s not debating skeptics on TV, that’s for sure. So would a full-on national media blitz by Obama’s Nobel Prize winning science team–Stephen Chu and John Holdren–help do the trick?

That’s what Climate Progress’s Joe Romm suggests, after taking advice from a recent editorial in the scientific journal Nature.

Here’s an excerpt from the Nature article (subscription required), entitled Climate of Fear (via CP):

The integrity of climate research has taken a very public battering in recent months. Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.

Climate scientists are on the defensive, knocked off balance by a re-energized community of global-warming deniers who, by dominating the media agenda, are sowing doubts about the fundamental science. Most researchers find themselves completely out of their league in this kind of battle because it’s only superficially about the science. The real goal is to stoke the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like, all of which feed off of contrarian story lines and seldom make the time to assess facts and weigh evidence. Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.

And all that is exactly why it’s all but futile for a climate scientist to go on TV to attempt to refute anti-science misinformation. So what to do? Scientists, who were never trained for and therefore aren’t particularly adept at “street fights” aren’t the ideal candidates to get in the ring. But scientists, despite the recent deluge of bad PR regarding climate, remain more trusted than almost any other group in relaying information to the people–and rightly so.

The thing with trust must be exquisitely frustrating for the chicken-little “scientists.” Yes, the trust is there — until they seize it, then it is not. The minute they start in with their “who ya gonna believe, me, a REAL SCIENTIST, or your lyin’ eyes?”…everyone with an I.Q. north of an overripe cantaloupe, for some inexplicable reason, stops listening.

Under the “How To Debate Climate Change: Don’t” article, there is a fascinating comment that received lots of high fives at treehugger.com:

So “debating” climate science in the dumbed-down forum of TV is pointless. These are the points that we need to be discussing:

1. Americans consume fossil fuel as if it were an unlimited resource
2. We act as if all the deposits are in our own country, under our control
3. We appear to believe there are no consequences whatsoever for extracting and burning oil

Whether someone believes in AGW or not, most people can see why extracting resources from a closed system and dumping waste back into it in ever-growing streams might cause some problems. To endlessly argue over piles of scientific research that few have read–or would understand if they did–is to postpone developing policies and taking action to address these (very real) problems…Oh, I see.

I wonder what an alien civilization would think of our grasp on “science” if they were to intercept things like this.

Science cannot be debated on the teevee, because debate too often degenerates into a contest among personalities. Hmmm. Very true. This is a real problem. B-u-u-u-t…you know, somehow I doubt this was much of a problem for the guy writing, when “contest among personalities” meant Barack Obama was elected to an office for which He is manifestly unqualified.

But he’s right; science is not about personalities. It is about forming a consensus, and once you acquire a critical mass within that consensus, making sure no other opinion can be heard or legitimized. Science does not tolerate challenges, and if one ever comes along it should be met with the ol’ “Will Not Dignify That With a Response” slapdown. Science is really all about putting dissent in its proper place.

Science is also all about changing policies. Once you have gathered enough “facts” to make your proposal look like a good idea, you should stop gathering any more. Cherry pick only the stuff that makes your idea look appealing.

Science is about monitoring how much of a resource people are consuming, and getting into a pissy mood about it. Science is about passing judgment on how people live their private lives, and cooking up scary stories about what might or might not happen to the rest of us as a result. Find some consequences, and if you can’t find any credible ones, invent some. Then start bullying.

That is what science is all about.

Meanwhile, back on the real Planet Earth, the one I call home…the analogy about the puppy with the dynamite stick holds. The fuse was lit with the East Anglia scandal, and any scientist who values his credibility will drop the “stick.” Any other puppies out there who still insist on playing fetch, will be blown to kingdom come.

Sad part is, there is a lot of money involved in this scary bedtime story. And if you count “money” by purity of profit, this new cottage industry makes the entire petroleum market look like a kids’ lemonade stand. So there are a lot of puppies out there who will still want to play fetch. And they won’t debate. Because science, after all, isn’t about debate. It’s about charlatans, canned speeches and golden idols. And policy change. Don’t forget that; it is all important.

If the policy change is likely and imminent, science is having a great week. If the policy change becomes unlikely, science is having a tough time of it.

Inigo Montoya moment.

Update: On the subject of “footprints”: Why (hat tip to Frank at IMAO) only carbon? Good question.

KGBKGB’s Global Warming Commercial

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, they’re obviously making fun of the doofus dad. It’s just completely in-your-face. Or…

On the other hand, it seems like they’re making fun of somebody else, and if I’m interpreting it right it’s the right people: Global warming zealots. Gawd do they ever deserve it.

And, I have a soft spot for Elizabeth Bogush. She’s a brain-babe. Besides, you win or lose a bet with your buddy and she’s the one whose clothes come off. Can’t get better than that eh?

Scientists Withdraw Sea Level Claims

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I’m completely confused about how to answer my grandchildren if the day arrives that they ask “Grandpa, what was ‘global warming’ all about?” And I’m not one of the people who fell for it. Ever. Back to day one.

I can only imagine what the suckers are thinking about it. Scale by scale, it’s all falling from our eyes.

Guardian.

In a statement the authors of the paper said: “Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.

“One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.”

It’s a pretty simple problem, really. Science tends to be funded by grants from national governments, and most national governments don’t spend a whole lot of money on science that says the world is not going to end. And so science becomes an industry dedicated to creating doomsday scenarios, whether it wants to be in that business or not. Kind of like an aging Hollywood celebrity selling life insurance on late-night teevee.

They don’t have to be socialists in order to get suckered into it. Quite the opposite. It becomes what pays the bills.

Now global warming isn’t “cool” anymore, and these studies are getting yanked.

Last week, three large companies walked away from the carbon cap-and-trade talks:

ConocoPhillips (COP), BP (BP) and Caterpillar (CAT) have decided not to renew their membership in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad alliance of corporations and environmentalists supporting cap-and-trade legislation.

“House climate legislation and Senate proposals to date have disadvantaged the transportation sector and its consumers, left domestic refineries unfairly penalized versus international competition, and ignored the critical role that natural gas can play in reducing GHG emissions,” Conoco CEO Jim Mulva said in a statement.

When President Obama swept into office with huge Democratic majorities in Congress, many corporations felt they needed to get on board to try to influence the legislation. But cap-and-trade has stalled in the Senate, the Copenhagen climate treaty talks failed and there has been a slew of embarrassing revelations regarding global warming data and forecasts. So sweeping emissions curbs no longer seem inevitable.

James Taranto pointed out that the global warming advocates are the real “deniers”. He’s right.

There are, no doubt, lots of true believers in global warming–not scientists, but people, including many journalists, who have embraced global warmism as a political and quasireligious doctrine based, they have been led to believe, on the authority of science.

Even Phil Jones acknowledges climate science is rife with uncertainty, but global warmism’s popularizers refuse to brook any doubt or acknowledge that the “consensus” they have touted is a sham.

And they used to call us deniers.

So I think what I’ll tell my grandchildren is this: People tend to like to do what they see lots of other people doing at any given time, and then call it “science.” Make it a “teachable moment” with them…maybe have a beer with them and talk to them for part of an afternoon about people “acting stupidly.”

Best Sentence LXXXIV

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

The eighty-fourth award for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is hereby presented to Robert J. Avrech at Seraphic Secret, for this gem:

There is no dialogue possible when one side is armed with information and facts, and the other side insists on a fossilized, delusional narrative.

Holy crap, can I ever relate with that.

Context?

Friends getting together, who almost never discuss politics because one couple is inclined one way and the other couple is leaning the other. But on this latest of occasions, the subject of global warming comes up! “You don’t believe in global warming?” inquires the pro-democrat-party, anti-human-achievement couple, incredulously.

Climategate? They hadn’t even heard of it.

But still they claimed the mantle of possessing a superior command of the relevant information. They had all the answers. They even used those four thoroughly worn-out words, the four that have been amalgamated into one. You know what I mean: Thescienceissettled.

Hat tip to Rick, who says the global warming believers need an intervention. I think with the hardcore cases like this, there’s something to that and they probably need a lot more than just intervention.

When you’re trying to present yourself as being thoughtful about something, it’s all fine and good when you’re doing some thinking and it’s still okay when you’re not doing any thinking, but trying to convince others that you are. The latter case is a liar, but at least he knows what he’s doing. My point is, if you’re sane, you should at least know, internally, whether you’ve been doing real thinking or not.

I’m not commenting upon the liars. They are not part of what is alarming me here. I’m not commenting on the “Just Because of the East Anglia Scandal, Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Happening” people. They, at least, have thought things through enough to come up with their latest slogan.

I’m choosing a target with surgical precision. I’m talking about keeping it straight in your own head how much thinking you’ve been doing.

Lots of people in the global warming camp seem to have slipped this cog. They’re parroting talking points…which by itself isn’t raising a red flag quite yet…but then, down in the marrow of their bones, they don’t seem to comprehend this is what they’ve been doing. They really and truly do seem to think they’ve been thinking. Independently. Skeptically. Critically. As in — gathering information for themselves, and making up their own minds. When that’s the furthest thing from what they’ve really been doing. They seem to have lost track. Climategate happens, and their response is…well, nothing. They don’t even want to know what it is.

That’s a problem.

Are these people doing real things? Driving buses, performing surgery on pets, fixing someone’s brakes…stuff like that? Someone should be finding out.

Okay, Maybe That Solves Climate Change Once and For All

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Daily Mail:

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Fascinating habit those brits have. Here in The States, journalism has taken a severe beating over the last thirty years…mostly in the last two…but the people who pass as “reporters” and “editors,” I think, would at least wait for something to happen, inevitable as it may be, before reporting that it happened.

This skeptic is here to fulfill the prophecy. What’re we talking about?

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

Yeah okay, I have a lot of trouble condemning anybody for that. I’m sitting in here in my underwear on the couch, with a mini-netbook on my lap staring at a coffee table with a big stack of bills, some paid & some not, staring back at me and getting ready to tip over. With Netflix envelopes and NRA brochures kind of sprinkled into the mix.

But that isn’t the most impressive of the admissions. Keep reading…

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. [emphasis mine]

Trillion…dollar…rip-off.

Is this even still an issue anymore? I mean, aside from the natural momentum an object of such incredible inertia will naturally possess…in the form of the vestigial chattering engaged by the intellectually vapid who can’t quite manage to keep up on things.

Once that dies down, this will all go away right? We’re done?

I mean seriously, if this doesn’t draw it all to a close, then what would?

Bin Laden Blasts US for Climate Change

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Uh oh, someone’s been drinking the Kool Aid

Osama bin Laden sought to draw a wider public into his fight against the United States in a new message Friday, dropping his usual talk of religion and holy war and focusing instead on an unexpected topic: global warming.

The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar.

A position that comes naturally to anti-human-rights folks, collectivists, plutocrats, tyrants, demagogues, and violators of women.

Kinda hard to keep a straight face about it. It’s like a “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” of your favorite issues. Hey, you got ManBearPig in my terrorists! Oh yeah, well you got terrorists all over my ManBearPig!

From Allahpundit at HotAir.

Red State Update on Climategate

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Language NSFW.

Do it, or the planet will burn up. Do it now. …in a bucket.

Green Studies

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Okay, up until now it might have been just irritating. It has just now ceased to be harmless.

Green TechnologyColleges are rapidly adding new majors and minors in green studies, and students are filling them fast.

Nationwide, more than 100 majors, minors or certificates were created this year in energy and sustainability-focused programs at colleges big and small, says the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. That’s up from just three programs added in 2005.

Two factors are driving the surge: Students want the courses, and employers want the trained students, says Paul Rowland, the association’s executive director.

“There’s a great perception that there’s a sweet spot with energy to do good and do well, and it appears to be the place of job growth,” says Rob Melnick, executive dean of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Uh, yeah. That’s the problem. It’s going to appear to be the place of job growth for a good long time…I give it about a decade.

At the end of which, we’re going to be acutely feeling the effects of all these professionals walking around, every bit of fluff stuffed into their noggins pure symbolism, no substance. Which means they won’t know how to build a goddamn thing, and they won’t know how to think like builders either.

Already, during any stretch of time that sees you accumulating…oh…let us say…twenty things of which you feel the need to complain — nineteen times or more, you are told “I don’t make the rules.” Or “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Or “company policy.” And these aren’t you-charged-me-too-much types of complaints. Overcharging benefits somebody. It makes sense on one side. This is stuff that is unreal…sur-real…inexplicable…doesn’t help anyone. You present your logical, well-thought-out argument that this is the wrong way to be doing it, and you’re given some bulletproof iron-curtain policy that says they gotta keep doing it that way, whether it makes sense or not.

You see what’s happening here? We’re becoming experts in doing things efficiently…in theory…while carefully avoiding testing it out in practice. “Education” is quickly becoming proficiency in following sequences of steps scripted by invisible, alien, otherwordly others. We’re not trying to become efficient so we can do more of something. We’re becoming skilled in going through the motions, that appear to be the delivery of the substance behind truckloads of marketing bullshit. Green health insurance. Green Karate studios. Green banking. Green coffee, and green cups to hold it. Green Chinese food — blecch. Yes, sure, it looks like a genuine market demand. It really is, for the next few years or so.

This green graduates are still going to have solid careers, at the time their own kids are going to college?

How’s that possible? We’re losing the notion that revenue comes from other people…from our neighbors who are just like us. Something goes right at work, your sales guys land an account and it’s “an account.” It’s just there. Usually begins with “State department of.” They have an open bid on — something.

Real people needing things? That’s so yesterday. So our business world is becoming something of a festering swamp of narcissism. Each one of us wants to end up with “all” the money…or enough to live in comfort…but these green guys have their entire professional disciplines dedicated to servicing faceless agencies trying to satisfy arbitrary rules. Not people. The circle has been anti-circuited.

And they’re navigating a vast ocean in a canoe made from a giant salt lick.

Enough of your “green” marketing twaddle. For every unit of carbon you don’t emit, I’m going to emit three.

Environmental Movement Slogans

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

I’m offering the following twenty humbly…

1. Gutting the scientific method like a fish, for the sake of our environment.
2. Lying to people…for a cause we think is wonderful.
3. The greatest scam of all time…so we can feel good about ourselves.
4. Robbing from the producers…to give to the usual suspects.
5. Destroying technology on purpose…because let’s be real, what the heck has it ever done for any of us?
6. Tailoring the evidence to fit our preconceived notions.
7. The science is settled: Everyone who agrees with us, agrees with us! (Blogger friend Phil said this somewhere.)
8. Scaring kids, for a cleaner planet.
9. Saving plants and trees, by reducing the levels of carbon dioxide…which is precisely what they need to survive.
10. Making people feel bad about driving their cars…while we fly around in our private jets.
11. Doing really petty and insignificant things, like unplugging our coffee pots and cell phones…together.
12. If you build things that other people find useful in their daily lives and get paid for it…you better believe we’re out to get you.
13. Making poor, hungry people poorer and hungrier…for our pet projects, which are good for the planet because we say so. Trust us!
14. Because enriching yourself is an evil thing to do, unless we’re the ones doing it.
15. Bears can crap in the creek all day long as far as we’re concerned, but the stuff you exhale is toxic!
16. Four legs good, two legs bad!
17. The science is settled: Nature, minus man, equals the adorable talking woodland creatures you see in Disney movies.
18. Let’s just cut the crap: The world will burn out by 2050 unless your taxes are raised. It comes down to that.
19. The science is settled, and science is what we say it is.
20. Hide the decline!

Al Gore’s Fact Meltdown

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

GetLiberty.org, via blogger friend Rick.

If I Was Catholic, I’d Convert Now

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Sorry, but that’s just how I see it. This is crap. No other way to put it.

Nobody owes anybody an apology just for being. That point’s non-negotiable. If this really is the Successor to Saint Peter talking, you can no longer be a member of that church and call yourself an American.

D’JEver Notice? XLVIII

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Just a few weeks ago, as we were finding space in the back of the closet for Halloween costumes, negotiating with our kids about how much candy they could eat and when, and tossing out rotting jack o’ lanterns — it would have been an utterance of “denialism,” brittle right-wing ideology and curmudgeonability…there, I just made up a new word…to say…

The science behind man-made global warming is unproven.

Now, just a short time later, that’s lavishly and laughably charitable.

Puppy Playing Fetch with a Dynamite Stick

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Via Cartago Delenda Est, via blogger friend Rick, we come across this article in The Atlantic about how the global warming alarmists are responding to their disgrace. Rather fascinating the psychology at work:

The guild mentality has come to the fore. Campaigns are under way to defend the integrity of science from a scurrilous smear campaign. The message is simple: you are either with us or you are a barbarian.

The first line of response to the leaked or hacked emails, you recall, was to say that they showed science going on as usual–even science at its best, some argued. “Trick” did not mean trick; “hiding the decline” did not mean hiding the decline. These were innocent phrases torn out of context.
:
The next line of response was to say that the emails involved just a few individuals, and implicate no more than a sliver of information about global warming. Even if you threw out everything the Climatic Research Unit had done, such is the weight of other research that nothing would change…This is a strange defence. Would deleting not just selected CRU data but its entire research effort really subtract nothing from what we thought we knew?If CRU’s work is as redundant as that, taxpayers might wonder if they have been getting value for money.
:
Also note that the first line of defence fatally undermines the second. If the CRU emails show climate science as it is done in the real world, and there is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, then what reason is there to think that the corroborating research, even if truly independent, has been done to a higher standard?
:
Which leaves just the “attack on science”. Circle those wagons. If you criticise one of us, you criticise all of us. No distinction is attempted between intelligent informed critics and ignorant malicious critics. The distinction which is emphasised, rather, is between qualified critics and unqualified — where “qualified” means “people who agree with us”. What could be more anti-scientific?

To criticise the work of a particular scientist or collaborating group of scientists is no more to attack science than criticising a particular journalist is to attack press freedom, or criticising a particular politician is to attack democracy. Trying to shut down criticism in the name of science is the real attack on science.

They are a puppy playing fetch with a dynamite stick. The fuse has been lit, and it doesn’t matter if the puppy realizes it is a dynamite stick or not. It doesn’t matter that the game-of-fetch has already been played for so many rounds, that cap-n-crap taxation is inevitable…and all the freedom-bashing laws that lie beyond it are also inevitable.

None of that matters.

What matters is that these excuses, each and every single one, are dealing irreversible harm to the credibility of this supposed scientific discipline and those who practice it.

The puppy, be he aware of it or be he not, m-u-s-t drop the stick right now and run away. He must. If he keeps carrying it around he’ll be blown to kingdom come, and there will be no do-over.

“We Here at The Times Are Not Scientists”

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Clark Hoyt, New York Times Public Editor:

As world leaders prepare to meet tomorrow in Copenhagen to address global warming, skeptics are pointing to e-mail hacked from a computer server at a British university as evidence that the conference may be much ado about nothing. They say the e-mail messages show a conspiracy among scientists to overstate human influence on the climate — and some accuse The Times of mishandling the story.
:
Although The Times was among the first to report on the e-mail, in a front-page article late last month, and has continued to write about the issue almost daily in the paper or on its Web site, readers have raised a variety of complaints:

Some say Andrew Revkin, the veteran environmental reporter who is covering what skeptics have dubbed “Climategate,” has a conflict of interest because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mail messages that the University of East Anglia says were stolen. Others wondered why The Times did not make the e-mail available on its Web site, and scoffed at an explanation by Revkin in a blog post that they contain “private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye.” What about the Pentagon Papers? they asked.
:
The biggest question is what the messages amount to — an embarrassing revelation that scientists can be petty and defensive and even cheat around the edges, or a major scandal that undercuts the scientific premise for global warming. The former is a story. The latter is a huge story. And the answer is tied up in complex science that is difficult even for experts to understand, and in politics in which passionate sides have been taken, sometimes regardless of the facts.
:
Goode, his editor, said: “We here at The Times are not scientists. We don’t collect the data or analyze it, and so the best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view is, based on interviews with scientists” and the expertise of reporters like Revkin.

Commenters:

Tom J (33):

The defense that, “We here at The Times are not scientists,” is specious. You are also not generals, physicians, nor accountants. You certainly don’t hesitate to aggressively investigate and question war planning, mammogram recommendations, or Bernie Madoff. You sound like an air-headed Barbie doll lamenting how hard science is.

Jason (#43):

I’d suggest that there are two key problems with the New York Times coverage, one of which you repeated here:

1. It is interesting to know that skeptics _believe_ that the emails “show a conspiracy among scientists to overstate human influence on the climate”. It would have been much more interesting to learn that the emails contain passages like this: “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”

I’m not saying that reaction to the emails isn’t important, but shouldn’t the first priority be describing the controversial emails? Reaction can come later.

2. You say that the emails were “stolen”. Andy has repeatedly characterized them as having been stolen by hackers. There is a notable absence of evidence supporting this claim. The organization of the file itself strongly suggests that it was generated within UEA by somebody in an official capacity. Under UK law, leaking it may very well have been permissible depending on the circumstances.

I recognize that somebody else may have chosen your headline “Stolen E-Mail, Stoking the Climate Debate”, but it is unfortunate nonetheless.

Mike Zarowitz (#47):

Models definitely do help in understanding a situation and are very important in forming testable hypotheses.

However, the more useful models depend on plotting one’s data and then drawing the curves, not drawing the curves and then plotting the data.

illustrator (#50):

It does not matter who released or exposed the e-mails. They are out. They are factual.
The e-mails expose fraud, corruption and a conspiracy to perpetrate this global warming fraud.

The secondary big story in all this is the cover up by main stream media (NY Times) and politicians to hide the truth that these e-mails expose.

Those are chosen more-or-less randomly. Hoyt was rightfully handed his own ass cheeks on a platter.

Me:

D’Jever notice? We all who are not scientists, seem to enjoy a perfect license to side with the alarmists. It’s only when we show some willingness to listen to something offered by the skeptics that we have exceeded the limitations of our knowledge…and, apparently, caused an offense against some unnamed deity.

Yes. I said “deity.” That’s what I mean.

Thing I Know #144. In what deserves to be called “science,” you save the drama for your mama. People debating science, getting angry and testy about the skepticism from others, are advancing and defending what would more properly be called “religion.”

Hat tip to American Digest.

Dumping Copenhagen

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Sarah Palin says it is a must.

The president’s decision to attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen needs to be reconsidered in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. I support Senator James Inhofe’s call for a full investigation into this scandal. Because it involves many of the same personalities and entities behind the Copenhagen conference, Climategate calls into question many of the proposals being pushed there, including anything that would lead to a cap and tax plan.

Policy should be based on sound science, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population has increased. I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, we cannot primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes. The drastic economic measures being pushed by dogmatic environmentalists won’t change the weather, but will dramatically change our economy for the worse.

Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” Boycotting Copenhagen while this scandal is thoroughly investigated would send a strong message that the United States government will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices. Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place.”

Her words were directed toward He Who Argues With the Dictionaries…but it is He Who Invented the Innerwebs who saw fit to heed the advice.

My favorite Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, had some sad news. Climatologist Al Gore has canceled his $1,209-a-handshake appearance in Copenhagen.

The newspaper reported: “Berlingske Media må med beklagelse meddele, at Al Gore har aflyst sit arrangement. De over 3.000 læsere, der har købt billet, får pengene retur.

“Al Gore har denne morgen til Berlingske Medias store ærgrelse har aflyst sit planlagte store klimaforedrag for danskerne 16. december i Tap 1 på den gamle Carlsberg grund under titlen ”Klimakonklusion”.

“Aflysningen kommer med henvisning til uforudsete ændringer i Al Gores program for klimatopmødet, COP15.”

Google translated that as:

Berlingske regret to announce that Al Gore has canceled his event. The more than 3,000 readers who bought a ticket, get money back.

Al Gore has this morning told Berlingske Media’s great annoyance has canceled his planned major climate talks for Danes 16th December 1 Tap in the old Carlsberg because, under the title “Climate Conclusion”.

Cancellation comes with regard to unforeseen changes in Al Gore’s program for the climate summit, COP 15.

Allahpundit has a rather interesting discussion about what it does & doesn’t mean.

A fun story, but people are trying too hard to spin it as evidence that the Goracle’s lying low in light of Climategate. For one thing, I haven’t seen any report that he’s skipping the entire summit and its many, many photo ops. He’s skipping just this event. In fact, he may have dropped it in favor of a more high-profile gig:

Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider says the decision was made because of “all the events going on with the summit.” Dec. 16 is a key date for the meeting because that’s when the ministerial segment starts.

Beyond that, a guy who won a Peace Prize for becoming the high priest of this church simply isn’t going to turn on it this easily. The East Anglia boys will dump global warming — and each other, which they’re already doing — before Gore does. Nor do I think he’s ducking the lecture because he’s afraid to face questions about Climategate…

He continues. His logic has a certain soundness to it, interspersed with some soft, rotten spots. Form your own conclusions.

Me, I’m returning to that old, familiar exercise that produces such amazing results. You know the one…I think rationally and logically, and/but I’m convinced the globe is warming to unacceptable levels and man is the cause. Moving in a logical direction, where does that take me?

The Climategate scandal has caused enormous damage to my movement, and since I care about saving the earth and not about making shitloads of money, it follows that Climategate poses a danger to the planet.

Gore, therefore, is needed at Copenhagen. More than ever. Our continuing survival may depend on it.

So this makes absolutely no sense. Al Gore, according to the tenets of his own religion, is putting the planet in jeopardy for the sake of his own scheduling appointment calendar.

And then we have the “I’m Al Gore so I need to zip around in a 747 to deliver my oh-so-important message”…but as Winnie The Pooh said, that is a story for another day.

Or not. Maybe the fat lady is warming up.

Best Sentence LXXV

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

The seventy-fifth award for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes out to blogger friend Phil:

Frankly, I doubt Ed Begley Jr. has a clue what “peer review” means. It’s just a term AlGore’s been throwing about lately, so Ed parrotts [sic] it.

If you get to define away scientists who disagree with you as non-peers, then peer review becomes meaningless. Well all the people who agree with us agree with us!!! [bold emphasis mine]

Video clip follows…

I wasn’t going to include that video clip, I’d decided to take a pass on it because it’s just more two-people-yelling-at-each-other. But now that we’re talking about it, it is a curious thing: People like E.B.Jr. seem highly agitated about this, it isn’t just him. And the agitation doesn’t seem, to me anyway, to have an awful lot to do with any fear of the earth burning up. Looks more like good, old-fashioned, plain-Jane hatred toward dissenting voices.

E-Mail-Theft-Gate: That Took Longer Than I Thought

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

But it still happened nevertheless. And it’s my favorite baby-boom hippy-rad oh-so-adorable I-am-woman-hear-me-carp senator.

Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,'” she said during a committee meeting. “Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I’m looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public.”
:
“We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not,” Boxer said. “Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.

“This is a crime,” Boxer said.

Must be a talking point disseminated from some central location somewhere. Newsbusters is taking down Huffington Post for putting out exactly the same foolishness at more-or-less exactly the same time.

So let us now join the Huffington Post Green section as irritation is expressed over the term “ClimateGate” as they wish it to be replaced by “SwiftHack”:

The verdict on global warming is in — it’s caused by humans and it is happening and nothing in the emails remotely challenges that. However, with the internet abuzz about what has been labeled “ClimateGate,” we thought we should set the record straight about the rumors, lies and insinuations about what the emails actually contain — and what they “prove” about climate change. “ClimateGate” itself is a misnomer, the nickname should be “SwiftHack” for the way people with political agendas have “swiftboated” the global warming reality.

Translation: My mind is made up so don’t confuse me with the facts.

“Nothing in the emails remotely challenges that.” Oh, that is so rich. It’s a half-truth, just like “warmest temperature on record.”

It’s time for all global-warming zealots of sound mind and decent character to let go.

What we’re seeing right now, is the “science coming in” on which global-warming zealots possess weak minds and substandard character. It’s a litmus test. And Boxer, et al, are failing it rather miserably.

The Vilest Commercial Blogsister Daphne Has Ever Seen

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Let’s see…the way the statistics are used constitutes abuse, the logic is unsound, the implications are sick, we’re ready to go — lights, camera, action.

Read her comments, and those of others.

To me, it’s just a monument to all the things that happen to a mind, when guilt meets up with an anxiety to do something.

Is it my imagination, or is it that out of all the effort taking place to fightblowgalwarming…some ninety-nine percent of it is going toward getting the word out that the other guy has to do something? There’s something a tad curious about that. Obviously it’s not the right way to go — it’s late 2009 now, I know there are little kids getting born every year, but for the most part just about anyone capable of getting dressed and walking around, has heard of global warming, carbon, and the blah blah blah. The word’s gotten out. Mission accomplished.

But I think we’re seeing a portrayal of a fundamental human weakness here. Once we recognize a need to do something, we seem overly enamored of the prospect of telling others to do something — “grab a mop!” — as opposed to just doin’ the stuff. I’m not talking about laziness. I’m talking about a lust for attention. We’re surrounded by idiots who buy into this thing hook line and sinker…and yet…the idea of just plugging away tediously at the things in their own lives, using what they have “learned” to make their own routines more environmentally friendly without anyone paying attention to them, is absolutely horrifying to them. World’s burning out, and they have to use the occasion to get some attention.

Whatever your thoughts on global warming: If you think there is a problem persisting because of lack of awareness, and yet more mass-communication messages are part of the solution we need the most…you are hopelessly deluded. You are no longer attached to reality. It is so late by now, that the old people have stopped forwarding e-mails about flashing your headlights at gang members. They figured out the folly of doing this years ago, and they’re old. Here you are still “getting the word out about carbon and the greenhouse effect.” What in the hell is wrong with you?

D’JEver Notice? XLVII

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Think of this one (along with all the other d’jever-notice posts) as an inquiry of the “Am I The Only One Who” sort. Not so that I can tell others what they should be thinking…I really do want to know if I’m the only one.

Liberals are working on two pieces of “landmark legislation” right now. You know the drill: They pass “landmark” stuff, everybody else “sets the clock back a hundred years.” I’d sure like to exchange some ideas with them right about now — find out what in the hell is going on in their head, how it makes sense to call a new offense punishable by hard prison time a “public option.”

But it is at times like these that it is toughest to engage them. Going by their words, it is all my fault. I’m at my stupidest right now. I need to pipe down and shut up until the “landmark” is safely on the desk of “basically God” getting that Presidential signature. Then, presumably, I’ll smarten up and I’ll be fit for casual conversation again. They’ll be happy to discuss with me the latest Boston Legal re-run, and what a wonderful job it did of “presenting both sides.”

So am I particularly stupid during these times? Or am I always stupid, and it’s only evident when liberals are in the middle of trying to do something that makes the living of life a whole lot more secure but also a whole lot tougher?

I keep wondering, because when they are in the middle of doing their damage, I don’t get the impression that they think I’m stupid…or that they think it’s evident that I’m stupid. The impression I get is of a subtly different thing. It’s that there is great urgency in audibly pointing out how stupid I am. To sit there silently, nodding, thinking to one’s hardcore-liberal self about what a stupid dolt I am, is decidedly out of the question. It’s rather like an air raid siren. And it competes with others, because anyone else pointing out facts inconvenient to the latest liberal attempt, is just as stupid as I am, and it’s just as urgent an exercise to point out that too.

My God, the energy liberals spend giving instructions to each other on what to think about things. Just the sheer wattage involved. One must naturally wonder if it might not be a principal cause of global warming.

This is not natural. I do, just in my own personal stuff, some “landmark” things now and then. Like anyone else who labors to make things a certain way and wants them to turn out right, I try to avoid it. Go for the smaller, incremental, testable changes first. When a “landmark” thing becomes unavoidable, my readiness, willingness, and ability to engage ideas reaches a high zenith rather than a low nadir. It’s my natural desire not to screw up. When I’m doing “landmark” things I want to make sure they’re being done right. It’s when I’m doing the tedious, mundane everyday maintenance things that I might be inclined to brush off what other people say.

Here liberals are with not just one “landmark” thing, but two — health care and climate — and all of we who are not them, are cresting out in our dumb ol’ chuckle-headedness. Perhaps it is a lack of ammunition that is the liberals’ problem. As Ann Coulter said,

If liberals were prevented from ever calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments…the loss of “dumb” would nearly cripple them. Like clockwork, every consequential Republican to come down the pike is instantly, invariably, always, without exception called “dumb.” This is how six-year-olds argue: They call everything “stupid.” The left’s primary argument is the angry reaction of a helpless child deprived of the ability to mount logical counterarguments…the “you’re stupid” riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas. Sometimes they evaporate in the middle of an argument and you’re left standing alone, arguing with yourself. More often, liberals withdraw figuratively by responding with ludicrous and irrelevant personal attacks.

And this does seem to be what I’m seeing.

It causes me great concern. There is supposed to be a whole lot of confidence that Nancy Pelosi has slapped together the perfect stack of 2,000 pages of stuff…stuff that’ll fine your ass thousands of dollars if you don’t buy a health plan, and then after that, throw you in the hoosegow if you still haven’t complied.

That it is a liberal idea, concerns me greatly. These never seem to be good ideas, in the long run. Never.

But it causes me much greater concern that it’s being defended by people who argue like six-year-olds. Even if they’re right about me and others being so stupid…does it matter? Stupid people, every now and then, have the right idea. Smart people, very often have the wrong one.

People who argue like six-year-olds, on the other hand, cannot select the right idea any more often than they would by random chance. To make a good decision more often than you would by random chance, you have to be able to evaluate an idea, figure out where it would lead over time, and think rationally and dispassionately on any objections to it. All that might very well, once in awhile, be within the capacity of a stupid person. But six-year-olds lack this ability, and so people who argue like six-year-olds also must lack this ability. Unless they’re hiding some secret skill set, which does not seem to be the case.

If it’s a great, wonderful plan that will help the country, seems to me it should be possible to see it defended that way now & then. But I don’t. The urgency in pointing out my brainlessness seems to always take priority. So is it just me?

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano‘s place.

Gullible Eager-Beaver Planet Savers

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Mark Steyn:

“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Fighting Soft Comfortable Toilet Paper

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Toilet PaperThe activists are taking up the good fight. It’s interesting that each little thing that “hurts the environment” is something comfortable. In fact, speaking for myself, if I were to make a list of everyday things that tick me off, it would probably have the same contents as the list of things that have inexplicably escaped, and will continue to escape, this environmental scrutiny that is so unavoidable by other things not quite so annoying. Plush toilet paper needs a good protest. People driving around with boom boom boom music in a convertible with the top down — they don’t need protesting. Nor do kids jumping on their skateboards waaaaaay too close to your car.

Captain Capitalism is prompted by the soft-toilet-paper protest to ask: Do the activists look back on their lives with regret when it’s all over? Interesting thought.

Hat tip to Fourth Check Raise.

Update: Blogfather Gerard gives us permission to use his graphic. We chose to embellish. That’s how we roll…

…Also, prowling through our archives we discovered this nugget of brilliance about all the things that never seem to be blamed for global warming. But we’d dearly love to see that happen.

Like I said: It’s never the annoying things. Never the prickly uncomfortable things. Never the things that get under your skin. It always seems to be the things sane people would like to have around. They are bad for the environment. Mean screechy women with annoying voices, or bad jazz that gives you a headache — these never seem to make the cut.

Climate War Room?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Learning a lesson or two from the health care debacle, the “Save The Planet By Making Everyone Pay More Taxes” people are deploying a new political maneuver

The cap-and-trade movement, spooked by the pounding health care reform took over the August break, is scrambling to persuade nervous Democrats they won’t suffer politically for taking another tough vote this year.

“When you get your butt kicked, like we did [after the House energy vote], it focuses the mind,” said Steve Cochran, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s National Climate Campaign. “We found out that this is not something to hide from but something to lean on — even in places where coal is king and Blue Dogs were perceived to be running for cover.”

Climate bill supporters say they have spent the summer building precisely the kind of grass-roots network that health care didn’t have, with grass-roots operations in more than 20 states.

A “climate war room” — funded by more than 60 labor, business, faith, agriculture and environmental groups — has been set up to coordinate ad dollars and communications.

The groups are enlisting military veterans and point to polling showing a majority of Americans support changes to U.S. energy policy being developed by Congress and the administration.

But one of their egkspurts is backpedaling on some key points…

Imagine if the Pope suddenly announced that the Catholic Church had been wrong for centuries about prohibiting priests from marrying. Would that be considered big news?

Of course.

And yet something like that has happened in the field of global warming in which a major scientist has announced that the world, in contrast to his previous belief, is actually cooling.

This was the analogy made by columnist Lorne Gunter in the Calgary Herald:

Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn’t marry. That might generate the odd headline, no?

…When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it’s usually newsworthy.

So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?

Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference–an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change — Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.” [emphasis in original]

Not warmed for nearly a decade? Nearly a decade, in 2009?

So the Earth has not warmed at all…during all of the time George W. Bush was our President?

This is stunning, and if you need to understand how & why this is stunning, I submit all you would need to do is go back and relive your own life from January 20, 2001, in real-time. Be sure and read lots of newspapers. Don’t you remember? All the “Omigosh!” stories about dwindling polar bear populations…omigosh a big chunk of ice just broke off from the Antarctic shelf…omigosh the Arctic ocean is all liquid and this has never happened before…Greenland is green again…Aiiieeee!! End times! And a Hurricane just struck Nawleans because our Texas dimbulb didn’t sign the Kyoto treaty.

It wasn’t a once- or twice-a-year thing. It was several times a month. Some weeks saw more than one of these stories.

So it really says something that we look back on it all and find the most vital link in the chain, was never even there. Especially in light of the stigma that was placed upon “deniers,” especially in the scientific realm. Oh, if you expressed just a scintilla of doubt about what was going on, you were stupid, you were evil, and worst of all you were both-stupid-and-evil.

The Earth wasn’t even warming throughout all that time?

I don’t know what kind of apology you could give us, at this point, that would suffice. Why don’t you work on finding a way to kick your own asses, and then we’ll talk. You seem to be quite proficient in shoving your own heads up there, so I wouldn’t put it past you folks…but I’ll not be holding my breath waiting on it either.

“No Enemies to the Left”

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Michael Barone, writing in the Washington Examiner about our President’s “convenient fantasies”:

Legislation to restrict carbon emissions that is supported by the administration would undoubtedly kill a large number of jobs by increasing the cost of energy, and so you can see why its advocates might want to argue that there will be a compensating number of “green jobs” created — at least if the government spends a lot of money on them.

But this sounds like fantasy. If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs — if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.

Obama’s approach to health care legislation, unless he makes a major course correction in his speech to the joint session of Congress tonight, is of a piece with his hiring of Van Jones. By ceding the task of writing legislation to congressional Democratic leaders and committee chairmen, he has been following a “no enemies to the left” strategy.

One of the reasons The Left stays so strongly unified whereas The Right does not…bonded together and emulsified, almost in a surreal sort of way, like a demonic force is at work…is that The Right is motivated by a desire to avoid engaging in bad ideas, ideas that have been shown in the past to be wrong ideas, but that are nevertheless seductive. The Right therefore must be engaged in a schism regarding how forcefully to reject these wrong ideas, since we are all surrounded by well-intentioned but naive and inexperienced folks who want to go for the wrong ideas, and feel personally alienated when the wrong ideas are labeled as the wrong ideas they really are. And so any time it is necessary to drum up support that is represented through a count-of-noses, The Right becomes instantly fractured, if not vaporized.

The Left, on the other hand, is motivated by simple jealousy: If that guy over there has something I don’t have, something somewhere must have gone wrong, there’ve been some shenanigans going down, and I should get some of what he has. Obama says “no enemies to the left,” He is not the first leftist to work this way, because there’s no division in place until after the dog has caught the car, the spoils have been seized, and it’s time to divvy ’em up. Then leftists turn on other leftists. But during the paper-chase there is no primal force to divide them. They’re not trying to stop a bad idea from becoming the law of the land, they’re trying to make it happen.

It’s interesting that they’re running into problems now with staying together on this “public option” business. That’s because now is one of the rare times in which there is a price to be paid for reaching too far in implementing too much of the bad idea within too narrow of a timeframe; and, we’re starting to wake up to what they’re doing, so there is also an opposing danger to not implementing enough of it. A window of opportunity may be closing on them. Next year, our country just might be too wise and cynical to be slapped by this stupid-stick of wrong ideas — it may very well be now-or-never. So now, for once, it is The Left that is sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. That gets ’em fighting with each other.

Memo For File XCIII

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Out of all the things said in yesterday morning’s post, this part didn’t go over too well with a couple of our loyal readers…

The “I’m a fiscal conservative but a social moderate” stuff. It’s a phrase tossed around so casually now, so meaninglessly. Check out what that means. Socially, the democrat agenda is to increase the standard of living for those who don’t put much effort into taking responsibility for things, and to decrease the standard of living for those who do. What’s the Republican response to that? If “fiscal conservative social moderate” means agreement with that, then don’t let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

The question that arises is whether the nugget stirred discontent because of something that needed aligning with the truth, or whether it brought a stinging sensation that is the natural result of an effective disinfectant going to work.

I submit that it is the latter of those two. Had I any doubts about that, they were put to rest a half an hour ago when I heard the lies spewing forth from the lying lips of the early morning teevee news bitch (paraphrase):

For several months now the feds have been putting a lot of money into our banks, and now things are looking better.

I submit, further, that the thing being done to us has a lot to do with Item #3 on the list of ways To Motivate Large Numbers of People to Do a Dumb Thing Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Thing With Your Name Later On:

3. Switch Moderation and Extremism with Each Other

It’s a dirty little secret about people: They lack the ability to recognize an extreme idea when they hear about it. Even more helpful to your cause, they also lack the humility needed to confess, even to themselves, that they are lacking in this ability…

Is it really an extreme idea to call the lying teevee news bitch a lying teevee news bitch? Is it really an example of moderation to question the moderation of those who call themselves moderates? Well, how can we measure extremism versus moderation. We can go by popular decree, which I’ve never liked at all. And yet perhaps it has some legitimacy here — popular decree was how we figured out moderation-versus-extremism in the first place, was it not? And once the public has been forced to live through something, once it’s been educated through pain, the value of popular will slowly escalates. There isn’t too much sophistication demanded of an organism that is expected to recognize “Hey, this really sucks” when it goes through pain. Actually, on the flip side of that, it’s kind of insulting to demand the organism think to itself “Hey, this is really awesome” just because it’s told things are so awesome by lying teevee news bitches.

Obama Debt GraphOr, we can rely on simple mathematical concepts. The feds did pump a lot of money into our banks…but what the feds pumped into our banks…came from us in the first place. That, or it was borrowed. Our simple mathematical concept therefore is —

Money feds pumped into our banks, equals
money taken from us in the first place, plus
money borrowed on our credit

The borrowing has real consequences. First of all, it will be paid back. So your kids thank you. Secondly, as it is paid back, the federal government waddles into the money-lending market on the “borrower” side of the table…something like a seven-foot Kodiak bear waddling into your backyard swimming pool. Actually, that big bear sitting in your kids’ wading pool. We have a device to calibrate how the money-lending market works, in its effort to adjust to supply and demand. That device is the interest rate. You were wondering why, sometimes, we struggle with skyrocketing inflation rate; well, now you know. That’s most of it, the interest rate.

Interestingly, the second method I’ve proposed to measure moderation-versus-extremism, is currently not too far different from the first. Earlier in the year, as I wore my anti-Obama tee shirts around Folsom on the weekends, I’d gather my usual eclectic mixture of smiles & high fives versus dirty sideways glances & sneers. Lately I’ve added a new one to the inventory that removes all subtlety:

The reaction to this is unprecedented: People want to talk to me about it. Not “Hey, whaddya think you’re doing, you some kind of racist trash or what” kind of talk to me. They want to know things. They want an education. You can see it in their eyes, they just got done making a serious decision about something on which they now realize they knew next-to-nothing; they’ve lately become aware of this vast multitude of issues that were involved, and they want to find out about some of them. They suspect they’ve made a terrible mistake, if they don’t realize it outright; and they’d like to at least start the process of comprehending what exactly it was.

They’ve been told that it’s radical gun-and-Bible-hugging agitprop to suggest His Worshipfulness might have Communist leanings. And they’ve made the conscious decision that, you know what, I think I’d like to find out a little bit more before I just sweep all dissent aside like I did last November. They’ve started to figure out there’s a bit more to the story.

In fact, let’s rework that mathematical formula just a little bit more:

Money feds pumped into our banks, plus
money spent on interest servicing debts incurred previously, plus
money spent on all the bullshit administration layers associated with pumping money into our banks, equals
money taken from us in the first place, plus
money borrowed on our credit

Even with these new lines added, this formula still adheres to reality only in a superficial, Fisher-Price-Toy kind of a way. Many more lines would have to be added in order to capture all the things that really do matter; but as the additional lines are tacked on, you’ll see for the most part they aren’t any more flattering to the plan that was just carried out. The point is — the lying teevee news bitch’s summary only included the first line. This goes to show the high level of difficulty involved in capturing just how deceptive it is. This is exactly the kind of “news” that is worse than no news at all. But it’s the kind of news we’re being given, and expected to believe, if we are to evolve as good “moderate” citizens.

In fact, it is worthy of emphasis that I didn’t counsel the Republicans to ostracize or excoriate the “fiscal conservatives and social moderates.” My teachings had to do with inspecting, case-by-case, what exactly this highly overused phrase means. As I noted in my follow-up —

It is a hackneyed phrase that has been overused and abused to the point where it no longer means anything. What do you have to say when FCSM is used as a cover for things that are obviously not true? The “I’m a ‘conservative,’ but I acknowledge global warming” thing for example?

Is it moderate, or extreme, to infer against the data that there’s some planet-wide “mean temperature” that is increasing as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and because of this, we anticipate a global catastrophe; one that can somehow be averted if, and only if, we place large sums of money into undisclosed locations any time a transaction takes place that involves the consumption of energy; and then that we labor with the assurances, again against the evidence, that this virtual tax will somehow stop the planet from dying?

Form whatever opinion you wish to form about that one, fiscal-moderates-social-conservatives. I’ve formed mine.