Sigh. This is so bad… it’s funny. For the record, it is now official; Chris Mooney is a paid political hack disguising himself as a science writer. I’m going back to calling him a “kid blogger”, because no adult could have thought processes that give conclusions like this.
Chris Mooney | The Politics of Ice and Fire
The time to act on global warming is clearly now—right now. In a sane world, Congress would immediately take up carbon cap legislation, and President Obama would be giving a big speech on the issue—and pressing Mitt Romney to explain why he flip-flopped into climate skeptic land, moving in precisely the wrong direction on one of the most important issues to afflict humanity.
Moreover, President Obama would recognize this as a smart political move, because the hard-core deniers notwithstanding, public opinion on global warming follows the weather. It always does. Now, with the whole country wondering about the sweltering heat, about the wildfires and the derecho and the destruction, people are more than ready to hear that, yes, this is global warming, and yes, something has to be done about it.
And yet still, it is not happening.
I cannot overemphasize how dramatic a missed opportunity this is—because we know that even against the backdrop of an overall warming trend, the weather is extremely fickle, and so is public opinion. In late 2009, the year of ClimateGate, and then in early 2010 (of “Snowmageddon” fame), public doubts about climate change increased in association with winter weather—and that could happen once again as soon as the end of this year.
h/t to Tom Nelson
I find it amazing that Mooney can’t even do basic research on the derecho, like I did. 30 seconds with Google and he’d know that it wasn’t anything to do with global warming and according to NOAA’s SPC, that the Washington DC area and much of the eastern seaboard gets one about every four years:
So, why all the fuss over last weeks storm? Because it didn’t hit flyover country.
It hit the center of defective thinking, Washington DC. Hyperbolic ground zero.
I suppose though if you are a “hard core” fake science writer, you don’t look for such things. Somebody should take Mooney’s blogging computer away from him before he hurts somebody with it.
[SNIP: Not funny and not called for. -REP]
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Then I guess that you are not really familiar with Mooney’s fallacious and inflammatory writing full of hate speech against conservatives.
[REPLY: Too painfully aware. This comment, however, is much more acceptable… in fact, a little more bile along this line would have been perfectly acceptable. -REP]
Michelle Malkin is on this topic today, thankfully:
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/07/06/global-warming-blame-ologists-play-with-fire/
Marita Noon is the best columnist on global warming – true, she’s not as colloquial as Michell Malkin, but Marita Noon is always impeccably researched, linked, and clearly written:
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/maritanoon/
Hari Seldon says:
July 6, 2012 at 12:18 am
…Elftone:
And whats this ? A visual Basic programmer shooting himself in the foot …repeatedly ?
Some of us have no choice.:-(
I know! And some of us (me included) enjoy it 😀
http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~omri/Humor/shoot.html
I heard Chris Mooney speak at a Humanism conference in LA a couple of years back. He doesn’t understand the first thing about science itself, nor about how to think about scientific information. He’s confident in his beliefs, and casually throws around “denialist” and “denier,” as regards AGW.
The great irony is that the author of “The Republican War on Science” is a propaganda point-man for a war against science by Progressives, in the name of AGW, that has been more successful, more pernicious, and far more destructive than anything ever achieved by right-wing religious extremists (called “Republicans” in Mooney-world).
Both groups, Progressives and religious nut-cases, accept only the facts that are beneficial to their prior beliefs. All the rest are lies. Chris Mooney is of that ilk. It doesn’t take much work anymore to discover that AGW-science is a pastiche of incompetence and ideology. Don’t look for Mr. Mooney to ever figure that out.
Jon Jermey, nice site. I’ve bookmarked it. I agree with you about accomodationism. It never works with the ideologically relentless.
One of Mooney’s points regarding how those with the Republican brain think about subjects is the cognitive necessity to ignore or discount that which contradicts their points. A destructive derecho fueled by extraordinary high temperature differential? It happens every four years or so around here. NEVER MIND that it was one of the most powerful derechos ever recorded in the Mid-Atlantic, causing more destruction than anything other than a hurricane, according to the Governor of Virginia. The massive heat wave? Heat waves happen all the time, it’s natural variability. NEVER MIND that all-time high temperature records are being set (as for last year in Oklahoma and Texas), not just daily temperature records. NEVER MIND the increasing ratio difference between record highs and record lows. Temperature stations are sited incorrectly, or increasing trends are caused by ‘urban heat islands’? Of course that makes sense. NEVER MIND that phenologic data of numerous kinds show earlier springs and later autumns, the behavior of numerous animal species is changing, or species are declining, in directions consistent with climate warming. The massive fires out West, last summer and this? No big deal, summer is fire season. NEVER MIND that pine bark beetles are ravaging higher altitude forests, creating optimum fuel conditions under dry weather, and also causing soil erosion and water loss in the Southwest as pinyon pine and juniper die off. The decline in sea ice extent in the Arctic? Let’s hang on to the hope that the extent won’t go below the minimum of 2007. NEVER MIND that the sea ice volume is at all time lows, as is multi-year ice.
That’s what many of the discussions at this site amount to — cognitive reassurance for those who need to know that NEVER MIND is a way of dealing with a reality that they can’t deal with.
As for this post: NEVER MIND. It’s meaningless, because all the trends that go against the necessary belief structures are meaningless to those who are cognitively unable to consider them.
Good luck with all that.
Regards,
Oakden
“””””…..D. J. Hawkins says:
July 6, 2012 at 10:27 am
TWE says:
July 6, 2012 at 6:43 am
@ur momisugly George E. Smith:
The ‘science advisor’ you refer to is Sir Peter Gluckman, who is in fact a medical doctor (pediatrics) and is therefore no more qualified to assess the so-called climate science than any of us……”””””
Thank you for that clarification. I shall have to try and check back my e-mail to see whether it was Key, or perhaps Sir Peter, who actually responded to my suggestion that NZ, and Owstraylia, simply tell the Kyotociders to simply shove it, and lead the world out of the second dark ages. Now I’m thinking Sir Peter may have e-mailed me, not John Key.
Well the chief scientist of California’s CARB used to be a nurse I believe, so Sir Peter is clearly more on the ball, I would think.
Maybe as a Physicist, I could do my own brain transplant !
I think we need a “Summer is Coming!” poster featuring Sean Bean wearing a thong and wielding his new sword, Fire.
David L says:
July 6, 2012 at 3:58 am
Love the logic: Hurry and pass global warming legislation while it’s still hot and before it gets cold again.
Do these folks really think there’s legislation that will stop droughts, hot weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, derechoes, and every other inconvenient weather event?
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YES!
Some idiot Congressmen actually tried to legislate the value of pi and set it to equal three.
Indiana House Bill #246 of 1897 was introduced to the house by legislator Mr. Record, at the request of Dr. Edwin Goodwin of Posey County.
The opening statement of the bill:
After that I would believe anything of the dimwitted puppets we elect to office.
tango says:
July 6, 2012 at 4:51 am
Its sad that the world has changed so much in my life time[ 68 years] my grand kids will grow up in a world you will not believe, if we let all the rat bags take control GOD HELP THEM
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Of late I have given thanks I had no children but I hate the fact that this is the world we are giving to my nieces and nephews and their children.
Bill Illis says:
July 6, 2012 at 6:18 am
Why would it be good politics for Obama to try to push through Carbon-cap legislation now?
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Not now but in late November AFTER the elections. That is what they did with the much hated Food “Safety” Modernization Act of 2010. Push it through during the lame duck session and hope everyone forgets who did what four years from nowand are resigned to the much lower standard of living, black outs and working three jobs… IF you can get them.
“I find it amazing that Mooney can’t even do basic research on the derecho, like I did. 30 seconds with Google and he’d know that it wasn’t anything to do with global warming”
Well, to be fair, he did write Storm World on the topic, which was recognized by the American Meteorological Society.