In yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks wrote perceptively about the burgeoning populist revolt against the “educated classes”. Brooks was promptly slapped around by various blogosphere essayists such as Will Collier, who noted that Brooks’s column reads like a weaselly apologia for the dismal failures of the “educated classes” in the last couple of decades.… Continue reading Escalating Complexity and the Collapse of Elite Authority
Category: Politics
Terrorism and the militia obligation
Section 311 of US Code Title 10, entitled, “Militia: composition and classes” reads: “(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of… Continue reading Terrorism and the militia obligation
‘Twas the Chinese did the deed
Now, this is interesting. Mark Lynas writes this: Copenhagen climate conference How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room. I had a strong hunch that it was going to turn out that the Chinese had trashed any hope of an agreement in Copenhagen, and Mr. Lynas mostly duplicates my… Continue reading ‘Twas the Chinese did the deed
Copenhagen Conference Crashes
Well, it’s happened. The Copenhagen climate conference has concluded with a three-page fig-leaf over its naked failure that even the New York Times can’t spin as good news for the AGW alarmists. It’s kind of entertaining to watch them try, actually, but the glum tone of the report is palpable. The best laugh line from… Continue reading Copenhagen Conference Crashes
From Russia, with love
Oh, it just keeps getting better. As the Copenhagen conference collapses, word comes from Russia that the Moscow-based Institute for Economic Analysis has found evidence of skulduggery and fraud in the CRU’s treatment of Russian climate data.
Crazy in Copenhagen
Two days before the deadline for an agreement at the 2009 Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, Mother Nature is demonstrating the same sly sense of humor that Al Gore, el jefe of the global-warming bloviators, often seems to elicit from the old gal. That is to say, it’s snowing like a a sonovabitch and there’s… Continue reading Crazy in Copenhagen
Hiding the facts in plain sight
OK, this is lovely. Remember Phil Jones of the CRU saying they had retained only “homogenized, value-added” data rather than raw measurements? It seems that well before the CRU leak there was strong circumstantial evidence that much (perhaps all) of the supposed global-warming signal is accounted for by “adjustments” made to the data.
“The scientists have been tied up and gagged in the back room”
The unravelling of the AGW fraud continues to provide an entertaining mix of high drama and low comedy. My favorite recent entry on the CRU mob is a screed from a professor of mathematics in Canada: “All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.” Then there’s… Continue reading “The scientists have been tied up and gagged in the back room”
Facts to fit the theory? Actually, no facts at all!
It just keeps getting better and better. Now we learn that the CRU has admitted to throwing away the primary data on which their climate models were based. I quote: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.†This means that even the CRU itself has… Continue reading Facts to fit the theory? Actually, no facts at all!
AGW fraud unravels at an accelerating pace
AGW alarmists, led by the “hockey team”, have dismissed criticisms that urban heat-island effects have been distorting surface temperature measurements upwards. Now Vincent Gray, a reviewer of the 2007 IPCC report, says this: not only is the single paper on which this dismissal is based fraudulent, the hockey team knows it’s fraudulent and keeps citing… Continue reading AGW fraud unravels at an accelerating pace
Facts to fit the theory
On 12 Oct 2009, climatologist and “hockey-team” member Kevin Trenberth wrote: The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the… Continue reading Facts to fit the theory
Will the AGW fraud discredit science?
In response to the mounting evidence of fraud, data falsification, and criminal conspiracy by the “hockey team” clique of climatologists pushing anthropogenic-global-warming (AGW) theory, there has been serious and concerned speculation that the collapse of this scam may damage the credibility of science in general. This is a reasonable thing to be concerned about, given… Continue reading Will the AGW fraud discredit science?
Hiding the Decline: Part 1 – The Adventure Begins
From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions. ; ; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!! ; yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904] valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$ 2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’ ; yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey) This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise.… Continue reading Hiding the Decline: Part 1 – The Adventure Begins
Data Against Demagogues
Ken Burnside, a regular commenter here, has launched his own blog. Data Against Demagogues is about methodological integrity, the use and abuses of data visualization, and how to tell junk science by its smell. Ken hopes the CRU flap will become a teachable moment on these issues. So do I. More power to him!
Open-Sourcing the Global Warming Debate
The email and documents recently netjacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia raise serious questions about the quality of the research being used to underpin major public-policy decisions. In the open-source software community, we understand about human error and sloppiness and the tendency to get too caught up in a… Continue reading Open-Sourcing the Global Warming Debate
Hiding the Decline: Prologue
According to the summaries I’ve seen, the 61 megabytes of email and documents net-jacked from the Climate Research Unit a few days ago do not — quite — reify conservatives’ darkest fantasies about “the team” (as the network of professional anthropogenic-global-warming alarmists communicating through CRU likes to style itself). To do that, they’d have to… Continue reading Hiding the Decline: Prologue
Maybe if moral cowardice cost money, it would be less common?
Heh. State representative Fred Maslack of Vermont has proposed a bill under which non-gun-owners would have to register and pay a fee. Entertainingly enough, there is actual justification for this in a careful reading of the Vermont state constitution. The Hon. Rep. Maslack is joking. I think. And I’m against requiring people who don’t want… Continue reading Maybe if moral cowardice cost money, it would be less common?
Raymond & Polanski vs. “Mr. Society”
In my previous post, Why Artists Defend Roman Polanki, I analyzed the flap over the Roman Polanski arrest as a case of artists arguing for a privilege to behave like shitheels without being held to account for it. I advanced this as an explanation because I think it covers the facts better than some of… Continue reading Raymond & Polanski vs. “Mr. Society”
Why artists defend Roman Polanski
In 1977, Roman Polanski drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year-old girl. When he believed a sort-of-plea-bargain was about to come unstuck, he took it on the lam. He lived the high life in this self-imposed exile for thirty years, until busted in Switzerland recently. Now various of the usual suspects on the right wing’s enemies… Continue reading Why artists defend Roman Polanski
Uncivil society and the collapse of the nomenklatura
A few moments ago, I read a review of a new book, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, and the following sentences jumped out at me: This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.†The Communists borrowed… Continue reading Uncivil society and the collapse of the nomenklatura