What the CRU’s hacked emails convincingly demonstrate is that climate scientists in the AGW camp have corrupted the peer-review process. In true Gramscian style they marched on the institutions — capturing the magazines (Science, Scientific American, Nature, etc), the seats of learning (Climate Research Institute; Hadley Centre), the NGO’s (Greenpeace, WWF, etc), the political bases (especially the EU), the newspapers (pretty much the whole of the MSM I’m ashamed, as a print journalist, to say) — and made sure that the only point of view deemed academically and intellectually acceptable was their one.
Neutral observers in this war sometimes ask how it can be that the vast majority of the world’s scientists seem to be in favour of AGW theory. “Peer-review” is why. Only a handful of scientists — 53 to be precise, not the much-touted 2,500 — were actually responsible for the doom-laden global-warming sections of the IPCC’s reports. They were all part of this cosy, self-selecting, peer-review cabal — and many of them, of course, are implicated in the Climategate emails.
Now peer-review is dead, so should be the IPCC, and Al Gore’s future as a carbon-trading billionaire. Will it happen? I shouldn’t hold your breath.
James Delingpole, “Climategate: what Gore’s useful idiot Ed Begley Jr doesn’t get about the ‘peer review’ process”, Telegraph.co.uk, 2009-11-26
November 26, 2009
QotD: How AGW became the majority view
Damning with not-so-faint damns
A clearly impartial and unbiased advance review of James Cameron’s Avatar, due for release in December:
Budgeted at a reported $237m (£143m), Avatar is Cameron’s first dramatic feature since the record-breaking Titanic, back in 1997. The film is a science-fiction fantasy set on a verdant planet called Pandora and following the adventures of a US Marine played by Sam Worthington. Cameron shot the film on his own patented “fusion digital 3D camera system” and experts argue that the results take 3D techniques to a whole new level. [. . .]
The reviewer, however, begs to differ, describing the film as “alienating” and “weird”. Moreover, he/she argues that its pioneering visual technology is liable to induce nausea in the viewer. “The problem is with cutting in between 3D focus points and perspective,” the mystery critic writes. “The mind cannot adjust to it without a buffer — thus, Avatar is literally vomit inducing.”
Even the review’s praise comes with a sting in the tail. “There are some beautiful moments [in the film],” it concedes. “But overall it’s a horrible piece of shit.”
November 25, 2009
Rule 34, Stross version
I can hardly wait until 2011:
If you’re wondering what this week’s excuse for scanty blog updates could possibly be, it might have something to do with me being 40,000 words into the (projected) 100,000 word first draft of 2011’s novel, “Rule 34”. It’s a sequel to “Halting State”, set some five years after the earlier novel, and focusing on the way our definitions of crime and morality (not to mention the practice of policing) change over time. (Yes, the title is an explicit call-out to you-know-what. The term “Hitler Yaoi” has been used with intent … but only after I googled, rubbed my eyes, and concluded that rule 34 was in effect.)
For the three of you who don’t know what Rule 34 is . . . don’t Google Image search for it. It’s a very short rule, but I suspect it’s true for most values of “true”: If it exists, there’s a porn version of it.
November 24, 2009
Corruption and imaginary museum thefts
Do you remember the reports from Iraq in the wake of the invasion about the mass looting of museums? If any of it happened, it was a small-scale effort, not the major haul that was so breathlessly reported:
Western archeologists are finding that many of the news stories coming out of Iraq about the theft or destruction of ancient artifacts were false. The national museum had preserved nearly all its treasures, and there was no widespread damage to archeological sites. Like much of the reports from Iraq over the last six years, the main intent was to get an exciting headline, not report what was actually going on. Some reporters, especially those embedded with U.S. troops, reported having their stories rewritten, or simply not published, because their editors felt what was actually happening over there contradicted the U.S. medias belief about what was actually going on. Some of this attitude persists.
A recent international corruption survey found Iraq at the bottom of the list (of over 160 nations) in the company of Somalia, Afghanistan, Burma and Sudan. Because of election laws, that force people to vote for “lists” rather than individuals, it’s difficult to hold anyone accountable for corruption. A new election law, that fixed many of these problems, was recently passed, but senior (and often corrupt) officials are still trying to block this reform. Many of the Shia politicians running the government would be happy to see a Shia dictatorship established, with them running things. Most Iraqis are not so sure about that idea.
November 21, 2009
Ah, those deniers are causing a ruckus again
Don’t they realize that the science is settled, all the wiser heads are in agreement, and you can’t disturb their complacency with facts?
Elizabeth sent me a link to this round-up of MSM reporting by James Delingpole, telling me that I was behind the coverage:
Meanwhile, the Climategate scandal (and I do apologise for calling it that, but that’s how the internet works: you need obvious, instantly memorable, event-specific search terms) continues to set the Blogosphere ablaze.
For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.
And if you want to read those potentially incriminating emails in full, go to An Elegant Chaos org where they have all been posted in searchable form.
Like the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, this is the gift that goes on giving. It won’t, unfortunately, derail Copenhagen (too many vested interests involved) or cause any of our many political parties to start talking sense on “Climate change”. But what it does demonstrate is the growing level of public scepticism towards Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. That’s why, for example, this story is the single most read item on today’s Telegraph website.
What it also demonstrates — as my dear chum Dan Hannan so frequently and rightly argues — is the growing power of the Blogosphere and the decreasing relevance of the Mainstream Media (MSM).
If it turns out that these documents and email messages are genuine, it will set back the Climate Change/Global Warming lobby quite a long ways . . . unfortunately, it will also taint a lot of other scientists who have not been involved in the mass PR campaign to push the CC agenda.
There’s also the chance that this is a sting operation designed to publicly discredit the skeptics — who have been so cunningly designated “deniers” by certain MSM outfits — by putting an irresistible temptation out there, with just enough “real” data to appear to discredit CC, and then to reveal that the most explosive and incriminating stuff is actually faked.
November 20, 2009
Tweet of the day: “Killing a story”
FakeAPStylebook:
When a story is killed it is worth 45 experience points and drops one item from Treasure Table B.
Those inevitable “new word” lists
David Harsanyi falls into the trap cunningly laid for him by the devious wordmongers at Merriam-Webster:
Like other books Americans have a duty to own — the Bible or “Atlas Shrugged,” for instance — the dictionary does not require an absurd marketing ploy to sell itself.
Yet, every year a barrage of cockamamie “word lists” are unveiled by publishers seeking to bring attention to the evolving English language.
In the end, these lists establish two facts: 1) We are unable to invent any new words of value. 2) If you put a list together, a columnist will probably write about it.
One needn’t be William Safire, though, to be unsettled that the word “philanderer” is a major mystery to so many people. According to a new list by Merriam-Webster, “philanderer” (a national pastime, meaning to be sexually unfaithful to one’s wife) was one of the most searched words of the past year because of the crush of politicians and celebrities busy hiking the Appalachian trial.
The word receiving the highest intensity of searches over the shortest period of time was “admonish” (to express warning or disapproval). It was triggered by a crude outburst of a South Carolina congressman and the subsequent moralistic “admonishment” of him by Congress.
It’s not the lists themselves that bother me . . . it’s the blatantly contrived nature of the words appearing in most of the lists. “Unfriend”? Bleargh.
There is, admittedly, one trend that could prove to be a bright spot. The newly minted “teabagger” gives us hope that crude sexual terms will now regularly be applied to politics, where they can do the most good.
Perhaps “felching” will come to describe how the media gathers material for their coverage of the White House. Oh, wait . . .
November 19, 2009
How could Sarah Palin become a viable presidential candidate?
Mike Potemra has a solid idea of how Palin could overcome her weakness in public perception . . . and it’s not even something she has to do:
According to this CNN poll, only 28 percent of Americans believe Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. For a person as well known to the public as Palin, that is an appallingly low number. For someone who is already so firmly fixed in the national consciousness — more: who has already reached a stratospheric level of celebrity — where is the room for growth in popularity? Who are the people who could possibly move from the 70-odd percent who declare Palin unqualified, into the 30-odd percent who believe she is qualified?
The answer is: people who become convinced that her current low public image is largely the result of unfair depictions of her in the media. [. . .]
If prominent media figures show an obsession with Palin that is so deep that they put the rest of the world on hold just because she wrote a book — then people might start suspecting that, yes, maybe there really is some animus in media elites, and maybe we should give Palin another chance. That’s when the 70-some percent starts to melt away, and a Palin presidency becomes conceivable. The second step, from “conceivable” to “likely,” is an even shorter step than the first.
November 18, 2009
Your opinion on Sarah Palin is a political litmus test
David Harsanyi provides the (political) science:
These days, where you fall on the crucial issue of Sarah Palin tells the rest of us all we need to know about your character. You’re either A) a scum-sucking, terror-loving elitist or B) a radical, tea bag-loving simpleton.
Yet believe it or not, one can (as I do) admire Palin’s charisma and roots, appreciate her dissent on the policy experiments brainy folks in Washington are cooking up, and, at the same time, believe she has no business running for president in 2012.
In fact, all you haters out there motivate me to root for her.
There’s nothing wrong, for instance, with The Associated Press’ assigning a crack team of investigative journalists to sift through every word of Palin’s book, Going Rogue, for inaccuracies. You only wish similarly methodical muckraking were applied to President Barack Obama’s two self-aggrandizing tomes — or even the health care or cap-and-trade bills, for that matter.
The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration had awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to nonexistent congressional districts—which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one’s nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.
I thought Palin was a daring choice for the VP slot . . . one of the few decisions I could applaud in the otherwise hide-your-eyes shambles that was the last Republican presidential campaign. I still think she’s not the right person to run against Obama in 2012. But the campaign would at least be fascinating to watch.
November 17, 2009
Is your avatar racist?
For some reason racism is a hot topic at the moment. And not just ordinary racism, online racism seems to be the particularly irritating bee in a lot of bonnets. First, there’s the Twitter matter:
What happened? Last June a thread with the hashtag #thatsafrican became a trending topic. Here are some tweets that appeared with the hashtag, cited by the blog Afrolicious:
#thatsafrican when your last name when your lst name is OD too hard for teachers to pronounce
#thatsafrican if your son is the leader of the free world
#thatsafrican when your mum negotiates the prices of sneakers at footlocker. 99 dollars. come oooon!
#thatsafrican when your ringtone is african queen by 2face. haha!A journalist from the Huffington Post, David Weiner, published a piece “#Thatsafrican — when Twitter went racist?” shortly after the topic was removed from the Twitter stream. He said:
The debate is already raging over the appropriateness of the trend. Is it self-deprecating humour? A cover for racists? Something only Africans and African-Americans can joke about? Something no one should be talking about?
What’s more, it brings into question the role of free speech on Twitter and the company’s role as moderator, or lack thereof. If a popular trend on Twitter is deemed racist, what action is required on the part of the company.
Twitter is not — and cannot be — responsible for what its millions of users post every day on the service. Any hopes that it could do so are technologically unreasonable. Anyone can join Twitter, and there are no particularly difficult hurdles to clear in order to get an account. So Twitter posts can’t be policed in real time, and they can’t be pre-screened through restrictive membership requirements . . . they can only be removed after the fact.
Racism is a particularly difficult topic for Americans, in spite of the last 50 years of improving racial equality. Any conversation that veers toward race-based topics becomes potentially volatile and divisive. In the real world, visual identifiers like skin colour can still cause trouble between individuals. You’d think this wouldn’t be an issue online . . .
On one of my hobby-oriented mailing lists, someone posted a message about a new list covering basically the same topic of interest, but this new list “serves to highlight modeling achievements either personal or hobby-wide amongst minorities and/or people of color”. Ideally, the invitation would be ignored by those to whom it didn’t apply, and followed-up by those to whom it did. But we don’t live in an ideal world:
“This kind of thing is highly inappropriate. We have more than enough politically-inspired, politically-correct nonsense already. I suggest you post your comments elsewhere – perhaps on liberal blogs. Not appropriate here.”
“Weak man. who dies and made you god?”
“Wow. Just wow. Yours is the post that is inappropriate. Bone-headed, really. And completely off-topic for this list. There was nothing political or inappropriate about the original post.”
Okay, so perhaps the discussion dies down now, right? No . . . now the real trolls come out to play
“I hate to break this to you, but the Nam generation may not exactly of had your best interests at heart educational wise. Only the finer dept. stores frequented by northern tourist would have black and white water fountains while the Woolworths down the street did not.
Did they teach you that the “Montgomery Bus company” and one other interstate travel company were the only 2 that ever had Jim Crow.
It was a few rednecks and societal snobs, nothing more.
Your living a lie while empowering a political base that feeds on unrest.”
From that point on, Godwin’s Law is almost certainly going to go into effect quickly.
November 11, 2009
Murdoch’s brilliant, evil master plan
Lore Sjoberg has cracked the secret plan that Rupert Murdoch appears to be following:
The audiences for traditional newspapers are getting older, more crotchety and increasingly dead. Most people don’t want their news to come with such hassles as a cover price, ads or dissenting opinions. How to bring in a younger, hipper audience that’s willing to spend money just to prove that they have money?
Murdoch, that crazy mad genius, realizes that the only way to attract this lucrative demographic is to establish street cred. He’s going underground, reinventing news as an exclusive club that you can’t find just by entering a search term.
Presumably, Murdoch’s New York Post, for example, will be renamed to something hip and enigmatic, like Velocity or Unk. The new URL won’t be publicized. To get it, you’ll have to know somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, or show a lot of cleavage. There will be a long line outside the website, just like an exclusive club or World of Warcraft right after an expansion release. A moderator will check out your online presence and won’t let you in unless you’re a mover, a shaker, a player, a spender or showing a lot of cleavage.
Once inside, the website will be dark, noisy and disorienting, just like an exclusive club or a MySpace page. There will be a two-drink minimum. I’m not sure how that will work, actually, but if anyone can force people to buy $10 beers while browsing the web, it’s my man Rupert. People will pretend to be reading stories about police standoffs and Knicks games, but they’ll actually be looking around to see who else made it in. And all that affectation and posing is like unto money in Murdoch’s pocket.
November 9, 2009
QotD: Society must be protected
I think this does not go nearly far enough. Clearly the company behind Red Bull should be closely regulated as it is only a matter of time before someone drinks one and jumps off a building and falls to their death because contrary to their claims, Red Bull does not in fact ‘give you wings’.
In short, as people who are not ‘experts’ are moronic halfwits incapable of telling reality from advertising hype, we must simply turn over all aspects of our life to government approved
self-important technocratic prigsqualified ‘experts’ who can determine what we are permitted to see.We must ‘do it for the children’ of course.
Perry de Havilland, “All your images belong to us”, Samizdata, 2009-11-09
November 7, 2009
Watch for those dreaded ellipses
Patterico does some reconstructive surgery on Glenn Greenwald’s less-than-totally-honest practice of partial quoting:
Greenwald’s implication is clear: right-wing blogger Patterico shouldn’t have recommended Allahpundit’s coverage — and right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds shouldn’t have linked Patterico’s recommendation of Allahpundit.
If only those right-wing bloggers had warned their readers to be skeptical and avoid jumping to conclusions . . .
But wait! What’s that little ellipsis in Greenwald’s quotation of my post? Why, I do believe that’s an indication that he left something out of my quote! Let’s just look at that whole quote to see what Greenwald chose to omit, shall we? I’ll put the part Greenwald omitted in bold type:
Whenever there is breaking news, it’s good to keep a few things in mind:
* Don’t jump to conclusions.
* Don’t be afraid to discuss relevant topics even if they seem politically incorrect.
* Always follow Allahpundit.
Hmmm. So Greenwald omits the part of my quote where I explicitly warn readers, as the very first thing I say, that they should not jump to conclusions in breaking news situations. And then Greenwald implies that my recommendation of Allahpundit was a poor one because Allahpundit jumped to invalid conclusions.
November 3, 2009
Obscure band discovers controversy is cheapest advertising
The Guardian reports on the umpteen-thousandth demonstration that controversial material gets more column inches than good music:
San Francisco band Girls have made sure their music video won’t be played on MTV — by filling it with “gay porn”. That’s how they describe the “Hardcore XXX Edit” of their Lust for Life video, which features phallus-flaunting footage that is itself a toned-down version of the original idea they sent to their label.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the group’s new video is not safe for work, children or anybody with a delicate disposition. Over the song’s joyous shuffle, there are nude girls in bathtubs, men putting on lipstick and, er, singing into penises. Certainly it won’t be showing on MTV any time soon, but according to guitarist Chet “JR” White, the Hardcore XXX Edit is “not even the [real] hardcore XXX version”. “It got cut,” he told Pedestrian.tv. “I’m kind of upset [the original] didn’t get put out, actually.”
“There’s a gay porn version we were really pushing for that was incredible, like nothing else. But at the same time, it’s really beautiful — about two people who love each other. We’re from San Francisco, so it’s not a surprise to us.”
The only difference with this manufactured “controversy” is that they’re not even trying to pretend that it’s anything other than a publicity grab. In a way, that’s kind of refreshing.
