Comments Posted By Modulo Myself
Displaying 1 To 10 Of 10 Comments
HADLEY EMAILS DON'T 'PROVE' GLOBAL WARMING A CROCK
This post on McIntyre's latest 'victory' (which I guess you are referring to) is instructive: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
Here is the instructive non-science quote:
The timeline for these mini-blogstorms is always similar. An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly ‘telegraphed’ across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything ‘hockey-stick’ shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the ‘hoax’ has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round. After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip.
I'm not a scientist. I don't know how modeling past climates or future climate on data works. I have to operate with the ability to believe in the credibility of others. And all I can say is that, according to scientists, the victory you seem to think happened did not.
Read what I wrote. I claim no "victory." My hope is that the debate gets back on firm scientific ground. Denying that there are still deep, complicated questions about the climate is ridiculous. Those making that claim are more interested in advancing a political agenda than a scientific one.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 21.11.2009 @ 16:11
As more and more data is released, as more and more scientists are free to actually engage in science and speak their minds, we are finding out more and more that the belief in AGW is on part with believing in Scientology.
I've been on the internet for ten years, and I do believe that I have read this statement (with the confidence in its inevitability only increasing) at least once per day for each of those years.
The truth is that the 'sceptic' movement is pretty much finished. There is no science left to counter the consensus on man-made climate change. The sad attempts to debunk the hockey stick--which, incidentally, contra the reporting of reputable scientific journals such as The American Thinker is still considered accurate--never panned out. Other favorites suffered similar fates. Christy's temperature decline was corrected to show warming. Solar cycles are a bust. Now the 'sceptics' are down to the insertion of an El Nino in order to prove cooling for the period spanning (current year - 1998), which, in their minds, proves something.
It would be funny, if in fact people did not take this crap seriously.
Sorry, but you are about a year too late to save the hockey stick. McIntyre has destroyed it. Mann and Briffa finally had to release their data - after 10 years of resisting which no reputable scientist would ever, ever do - and even the IPCC is backing away from it.
I will repeat for those like you who are comprehension challenged; debunking the hockey stick does not debunk global warming. And anyone who makes incredibly idiotic statements like "There is no science left to counter the consensus..." shouldn't be commenting on any post dealing with any scientific subject.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 21.11.2009 @ 15:05
SOME SHORT NOTES ON KSM AND AMERICAN JUSTICE
Just to make my position clear, KSM is not special, he's just a damn human. He should be tried either in our courts as a criminal, or be treated as a POW, like any other captured soldier. The right's extra-legal BS has been appalling since day one. It's only real use has been for domestic consumption, so to allow the usual pathetic cases the illusion that hate and cruelty equals toughness.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 14.11.2009 @ 14:33
Right, Rick, I'm a moron for reading your blog posts on how deep and destructive to our freedom health care will be, and then reading how it's a tragic mistake to adhere to these freedoms in the case of a terrorist.
You're a good guy, and you're definitely not arguing in bad faith, but you seem tremendously blind to what motivates you to have these positions.
False equivalency on steroids.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 14.11.2009 @ 14:29
It's pretty telling that you go on and on about Americans and their love for freedom when it concerns the tyranny of health care; and at the same time, then go on and on about how our legal system and rule of law is inferior to show trials and extra-legal black holes.
40,000 plus Americans die each year due to a lack of health care. Your principles say that's a price we pay for freedom. But a possible attack at KSM's trial is enough to give up the rule of law.
And as someone who lives in NYC and works in lower Manhattan, blocks from the courthouse, there's zero concern about safety coming from these quarters. In fact, if it hadn't been for reading all of the wingnut rubes, it probably wouldn't have even occurred to me.
Anyone who would equate these two issues is a moron.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 14.11.2009 @ 14:04
But think of what you learned about the Missouri Compromise.
On a nice sunny Saturday afternoon, that sounds like a threat. But the Missouri Compromise was a political attempt to resolve an enormous concrete thing that in 1850 engulfed every aspect of American life. Slavery and racism were as important to America as the Constitution. I just don't see actual anti-government sentiment as being that influential as an ideology.
The reality is that the right can gin up protesters only for future programs, while using quite factual claims about death panels, fascism, socialism, and worse, the future program's inevitable assault on successful government programs, once protested with the same fervor and dire predictions as the one in the present.
If the right's claim was that health care could improve, costs would be lower, but you would have to fill out ten, fifteen, or twenty more forms per year, and, because the left is totalitarian, see a doctor each year, and have to hear a lecture about cutting back fats, cigarettes, and single-malt scotch, then the attendance and outrage would be much less. People want good health, and they also are kind of aware that good health is not exactly an issue that aligns precisely with other freedoms.
And for most Americans, the health care system is a nightmare. Even if you have health-care, most people live with a state of anxiety about being treated as anything more than a simple number. The idea that government is going to move in, and take away the old country doctor and lollipops is ridiculous. It is already an onslaught.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 7.11.2009 @ 12:49
How it ends will determine what kind of country we will be forever after.
Or it won't. Historians will have to give a patient explanation about the context, students will be forced to memorize the historical nobodies and their puzzling reasons for proclaiming the end of freedom, and the whole thing will be as lost as the dispute over Oregon's border.
Perhaps. But think of what you learned about the Missouri Compromise. Sure, some of the chaff of the southern position on the bill comes down to us but the real issues are what survived. And of course, Henry Clay and his tireless efforts to save the union.
"End of freedom" is an exaggeration, I agree. But an "infringement on liberty?" I don't think even the bill's proponents will deny that there are negative ramifications for personal liberty when any kind of "mandate" is involved.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 7.11.2009 @ 11:59
I am not sure anyone knows what’s happening in America right now except that things are changing.
Totally agree. But the Obama administration, no matter how much it is disappointing progressives and liberals, is on the wavelength of normal, attentive,intelligent, likable, and decent.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have forced themselves to believe that the ideologies and personas the Glenn Becks of the world occupy it.
It's really a division between those who have a clue what is happening, if only with their own lives and thoughts, and those who are completely lost. The funny thing is that for years, the big cultural war was over generic cultural elites and generic humble normal Americans. But it's turning out that the humble normal Americans have more in common with gay college professors who listen to NPR than they do with the lunatic who thinks that health care is the first step to nationalized socialism and the end of the generic American Way.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 3.11.2009 @ 11:40
But isn’t it ironic that when it came to my own writing, I failed to understand that each of us perceives the ideas and concepts on the page in front of us through our own prejudices, ideology, upbringing, and other elements that make us individuals?
But there's a twist: at a certain unknown point, honest subjectivity comes to an end and bad faith begins. In general, the right's problem is that they have made a killing acting in public bad faith while pretending they are subjective. The killing sponsored imitators. The imitators are now everywhere, because it is easy to spout this nonsense, far easier, actually, than doing any honest work, or honest thinking about America.
The bottom line is that conservatives, right now, excluding a few, really have no clue what is happening in America. Their spin has completely isolated them from anything real. They no longer even understand their victories. And when defeat occurs, as it will in 2010, there will not be a shred of comprehension.
Other factors beyond spin will no doubt take precedence in 2010. The problem as I see it will be that the right draws the wrong conclusions from any gains that might be made.
I am not sure anyone knows what's happening in America right now except that things are changing. Where that change will take us no one can say for sure - pollsters, pundits, politicians - anyone. We seek to divine trends but its like reading tea leaves at this point. I sometimes write about the undercurrents of history - powerful forces moving beneath the surface that we can only dimly understand. Revealing where these forces are taking us never happens in one "Eureaka!" moment but is only understood by the passage of time.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 3.11.2009 @ 11:13
'WHY DON'T YOU PASS THE TIME BY WRITING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?'
Climate models have largely been debunked by meteorologists who point out that there are just too many variables to feed into the computer -even supercomputers - to come up with anything approaching accuracy.
What you linked is not remotely a debunking. It was actually an affirmation of current climate modeling.
Ugh - you're right. Wrong link. Don't have time right now to search for what I was looking for but will correct it later.
ed.
Comment Posted By Modulo Myself On 16.10.2009 @ 13:23
