Today’s links to interesting news and analysis. If you find this useful, pass it to a friend or colleague. First, the regular news:
- A conservative visits the Tea Party Convention: “Black Helicopters Over Nashville“, Jonathan Kay (Editor at Canada’s National Post), Newsweek, 9 February 2010 — “Never mind Sarah Palin and the tricornered hats. The tea-party movement is dominated by conspiracist kooks.”
- “Nobel laureate Krugman: ‘Dark age of macroeconomics’ is upon us“, MIT News, 9 February 2010
- News from the front of the culture war: “Menace in mad march of the thought police“, The Australian, 10 February 2010 — “The dark spectre of illiberalism is slowly poisoning Western liberal democracies.”
- There have been rumors about this, going back to the S&L crisis: “The Great Highway Robbery Continues: How The FDIC Is Legally Transferring Billions In Taxpayer Money To Hedge Funds“, Zero Hedge, 10 February 2010
Updates in the climate wars, as the heat builds on the leaders of the global warming crusade:
- Today’s must-read article: “Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age“, Jerome Ravetz (Prof Philosophy of Science, Oxford), Watts Up with That, 9 February 2010
- Suddenly things the sceptics have said for years have become respectable (but they themselves have not): “If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too“, The Guardian, 5 February 2010 — “Programs do more and more scientific work – but you need to be able to check them as well as the original data, as the recent row over climate change documentation shows”
- Fact and fiction about global warming: “Climate Götterdämmerung“, The Editors, National Review, 10 February 2010 — Many of these quotes are unattributed, hence probably lies. We love lies, which is why people write so many of them.
- Disturbing research, but not new: “Climate ‘Tipping Points’ May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster“, ScienceDaily, 10 February 2010
- The paper discussed above: “Regime shifts in ecological systems can occur with no warning“, Alan Hastings et al, Ecology Letters, 10 February 2010
- Now even the fools who rely on the US media for their news learn about the IPCC chapter of ClimateGate: “AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent“, Walter Russell Mead (Council on Foreign Relations, bio), The American Interest Online, 10 February 2010 — “While the American press is still reporting the basic news, the (strongly environmentalist and center-left) Guardian is asking experts around the world how the IPCC can be fixed. Hint to the American press: this, guys, is what journalism looks like.”
- More IPCC fabrications: “IPCC burned on claim of wildfires affecting Canadian tourism“, ClimateQuotes, 10 February 2010
- More fruits from ClimateGate: “IPCC: cherish it, tweak it or scrap it?“, op-ed in Nature, 11 February 2010
- If you don’t have a subscription, see this: “Scientists say IPCC should be overhauled or scrapped“, The Australian, 11 February 2010
Today’s Special Features:
(A) Good advice from Karl Popper, a disinfectant to propaganda
(B) A horrible, chilling, probably false Quote of the Day from Senator Tim Wirth.
(A) Good advice from Karl Popper, a disinfectant to propaganda
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
— Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972)
(B) A horrible, chilling, probably false quote of the Day from Senator Tim Wirth
As Senator Timothy Wirth (D-Colo.) put it: “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
— From Science Under Siege: Balancing Technology and the Environment, Michael Fumento (1993)
Fumento makes no mention of when or where Wirth allegedly said this. No citation for the quote. Does Fumento believe us to be morons, uncritically accepting any fodder put into our trough? Perhaps so. This quote has sixteen thousand hits on Google; and appears often in sceptics’ articles about global warming.
Afterword
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