UPDATE: Pat Michaels responds, see below:
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Maybe it’s the summer weather, I dunno, but in the space of 4 days, we have three prominent figures in the global warming debate behaving badly.
First we have Al Gore, who paralleled climate skeptics with racists last Friday.
Then we had Pat Michaels, who made an unbelievably callous gaffe in a Forbes article saying
“It is doubtful that Irene will even cough up eight bodies,”
That’s not only callous, but disappointing coming from him. On the other hand he did correct it to read: “hopefully kill fewer than the eight people who died in Gloria,”, but I think he should issue an apology as well.
Then today we have Dr. James Hansen, scientist turned political activist, now with street cred x3, because he was arrested today for the third time.
I think we need cooler heads at the top of the climate food chain on both sides.
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UPDATE: Pat Michaels issued this statement and apology this afternoon via email to me:
While the text was in fact changed, the original was over the top. As anyone in this business knows, sometimes we don’t proof ourselves very well and say things that are hurtful, and that is not good and requires an apology to those unfairly hurt, which I offer sincerely. I will try to be more careful in the future, and I hope to have learned from this.
– Pat Michaels (via email)
It would be nice to see Mr. Gore (or anyone in the AGW camp for that matter) disavow his comparisons to racism.
” Not only there are Two Groups in Global Warming, here is a third GROUP, AIRCONDITIONING OF MOTHER EARTH. By capturing. Conc: from Desalters: No iceshelves deices, No sea rise, No more strong Hurricanes, 2*C. Can be very easily reduced, More icemasses means Airconditioning of Mother Earth.
All are Welcome to visit. Sarva Kala Vallabhan Group & Airconditioning of Mother Earth & comment “
You can’t be hurting anyone’s “feelings”.
Sarcasm like this is a NE thing, I have the same problem every time I talk to someone outside the NE.
re:
What really gets me is the apparent gross double standard. the “only if you state things in a manner I wish them stated & can’t hurt feelings” always seems to married to “but I can say anything I want, in any fashion, and if anyones feelings are hurt, it wasn’t my fault, something is wrong with them” PC always seems to wind up applied in a very selective fashion.
USA, clean up your act please. It is many decades since I hears of the USA being ridiculed in publicat vrial scale. Last I remember was after WWII in OZ, when there was a comment about the problem with GIs “They’re over sexed, they’re over paid and they’re over here.”
This week, this is circulating:
The US economy is so bad…
– I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail
– CEO’s are now playing miniature golf
– Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen
– Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America
– Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore
– A picture is now only worth 200 words
– They renamed Wall Street ” Wal-Mart Street”
– And, finally (drumroll), I called the Suicide Hotline. I got a call
center in Pakistan and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all
excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.
This concern about the number and description of Irene storm deaths is really an overblown example of MSM daily nonsense and it’s impact on otherwise reasonably rational people. The reach for PC empathetic glory, and related release of self injected guilt, always leads to loss of perspective. Holier than thou stretches abide. Nobody is immune. (Strange to see this crap infect this blog,) For example, go ahead and tally the body count for murder after any weekend in LA, Chicago, DC and NYC, and compare that to the Irene death toll. Apply the PC Grief Scale, record results and find out which death tally relieves the most guilt. This is better than buying indulgences; and cheaper.
Today is Thursday, September 1st and the death toll from Irene rose yesterday to 42 souls. What strikes me as odd about Pat Michaels’ apology — such as it is — is it inadequately concerned the coarseness of the words ‘coughed up bodies’ (I was in the Navy for six years, so I’m almost incapable of being offended anymore and every one of us bites it/passes on some day) but failed to address his true errors. First, there’s his hubris and foolishness in issuing a prediction of storm damage and death tolls and for dismissing the storm as mild. Why? Not because he was studying the involved science and making a meteorological forecast but because he was dismissing the work of those who were. That’s no basis for a forecast. Yes, weather force predictions must allow for wide variations in accuracy. That’s the sad state of the art and the best man can now manage. But to discount the accuracy of a forecast (fair enough) and therefore conclude the storm would be harmless? (Does not follow.) And to then spout off about it? Idiocy. No apologies there, it would seem.
Then, to failings 1 (forecasting sans science) and 2 (having a big mouth), now add his most egregious error: misuse of the word “hopefully”. Irene (the modified noun) cannot hopefully (the modifier) kill anyone. It cannot do anything “full of hope”. A storm is incapable of hopes, dreams, whims, or other desires. And so number 3: Though Pat Michaels is a columnist, a man who uses words for a living, he is not competent to do so. That’s three apologies he owes. Shall we bate our breath?
Yes, eyesonu and clipe, der Grammar Poletzei are here.
By the way — and before my meaning gets mistaken — if Michaels had correctly said, “I hope…” instead of “hopefully…”, he would not have been making a predictive statement about the death toll and zero apologies would then have been required. (He can be as callous as he likes and still cause me not a whit of damage… unlike Irene, full of musing and hope though she may be.)
And that’s why poor-but-entirely-correctable communication skills are unforgivable whilst unavoidably-quasi-accurate storm force forecasts get a pass. This weblog article is, after all, a piece about the perils of communicating poorly.