Baseball Crank: POLITICS/SCIENCE: Science and its Enemies on the Left: An Update

October 8, 2010

POLITICS/SCIENCE: Science and its Enemies on the Left: An Update

Scientific integrity and scientific progress continue to take a beating from the Left.

In Part I of my series of essays on Science and its Enemies on the Left, I looked at the toll of junk science, quackery and anti-technological Luddism and the role of the social and political Left in promoting all three. In Part II, I looked at politicized science (both the misuse of science by politicians and the politicization of scientists themselves) and the temptations presented to scientists by their ability to gain power through science.

I'm overdue to finish Part III of the series, but in the meantime, there have been enough additional examples of my thesis that it's worth taking an updated look at the myriad ways in which the agenda and interest groups of the political Left stand in the way of scientific integrity and scientific progress.

A. Fudged Environmental Data

You didn't think it ended with "Climategate," did you? The liberal San Francisco Chronicle reports on how a California agency used inflated, alarmist data to rush through costly environmental restrictions that helped push the state deeper into recession:

California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state's clean-air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.
The pollution estimate in question was too high - by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by replacing or making costly upgrades to heavy-duty, diesel-fueled off-road vehicles used in construction and other industries.

Researchers have found that the board's excuse - that it failed to foresee how much emissions would fall with the economic downturn - doesn't hold water (unsurprisingly, since these sorts of "mistakes" always seem to lean in the same direction):

While air board officials and other defenders of the board's science point to the economy as a major factor in the overestimates, Harley found that prior to the recession the board's estimates of nitrous oxide were too high by a factor of 4.5 and its estimate of particulate matter was off by a factor of 3.1, an extraordinarily high amount to be off scientifically.

The voters this fall will get the chance to render their own verdict on the board's junk science:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has promised to suspend the law for at least a year, while Democrat Jerry Brown supports the law. California voters, meanwhile, will vote on Proposition 23, a November initiative to suspend AB32 until the unemployment rate - now at 12.4 percent in California - falls to 5.5 percent or less for a year.

Perhaps not-unrelatedly, it turns out that the CARB's lead scientist on this initiative got his Ph.D. in statistics from a mail-order diploma mill.

And of course, the inquiries into Climategate itself roll on; Clive Crook, who prefaced his article with an assurance that he believes in global warming, nonetheless savaged efforts to whitewash the scientific misconduct involved:

The Penn State inquiry exonerating Michael Mann -- the paleoclimatologist who came up with "the hockey stick" -- would be difficult to parody. Three of four allegations are dismissed out of hand at the outset: the inquiry announces that, for "lack of credible evidence", it will not even investigate them. (At this, MIT's Richard Lindzen tells the committee, "It's thoroughly amazing. I mean these issues are explicitly stated in the emails. I'm wondering what's going on?" The report continues: "The Investigatory Committee did not respond to Dr Lindzen's statement. Instead, [his] attention was directed to the fourth allegation.") Moving on, the report then says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers -- so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false.

Crook's piece on similar efforts to whitewash the CRU's misconduct is worth reading in full, as is streiff's entertaining takedown of Mann's efforts to defend his tattered reputation. The British government has reacted by basically pressuring scientists into signing what James Taranto - only mildly exaggerating - termed a loyalty oath to the government's scientific pronouncements:

The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails.
More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the "professional integrity" of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

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One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. "The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming," he said.

Meanwhile, the Watts Up With That site has undertaken a massive study of the sources of temperature data, and its report (caution: link opens a 209-page PDF) finds major problems in the whole data-collection process:

It was necessitated by the extraordinary revelations in the recently released CRU emails, including the admissions of Ian "Harry" Harris, the CRU programmer. He lamented about "[The] hopeless state of their (CRU) database. No uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found" and "Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!!" CRU member, Phil Jones, candidly confessed in a BBC interview that "his surface temperature data are in such disarray they probably cannot be verified or replicated."
This reflects on both NOAA and NASA in the United States. Phil Jones also admits that "Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the GHCN archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center" and that NASA's GISS uses the GHCN, applying its own adjustments, as it explains: "The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from the following datasets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations."

The paper is also a natural progression of the ongoing work of the authors, who have focused on actual data instead of models and theories. Anthony Watts put together a volunteer team to do the due diligence the government said it could not afford on the stations and found the vast majority (90%) to be sited poorly by the governments own standards.

The 15-point summary of conclusions on pp-6-7 is worth reading even if you don't have time for the full report. Examples:

Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant "global warming" in the 20th century.

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Global terrestrial temperature data are compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once reported are no longer being used in data trend analyses.

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In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Changes in data sets introduced a step warming in 2009.

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Due to recently increasing frequency of eschewing rural stations and favoring urban airports as the primary temperature data sources, global terrestrial temperature data bases are thus seriously flawed and can no longer be representative of both urban and rural environments. The resulting data is therefore problematic when used to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

Garbage in, garbage out; the problem goes all the way to the root of the data that underlies not just the theory but the reliability of models that can only be tested against this ever-shifting landscape of unreliable data.

At the same time, scientists are beginning to recognize that they don't really have a complete, settled understanding of the Sun, and maybe should start considering it in future climate models.

B. Obama Administration Again Squashes Unfavorable Reports

Once again, government scientists were pressured by this Administration to avoid releasing embarrassing reports:

The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. . .
Citing interviews with government officials, the report reveals that in late April or early May, the White House budget office denied a request from NOAA to make public its worst-case estimate of how much oil could spew from the blown-out well.

The Administration played a similar game when it came to its moratorium on offshore drilling, pretending to have "peer-reviewed" scientific support it didn't actually have:

The White House issued a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. Obama cited a report commissioned by the Interior Department that purported to recommend the ban.
"The recommendations contained in this report," declared the document, "have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."

Except that was untrue. In fact, it was such a glaring lie that the seven engineers who peer-reviewed an earlier version of the document felt obliged to come forward to clear the air.

"The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct," wrote the scientists, "but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."

The draft these experts saw was substantively different from the document that bore their names. The draft called for a moratorium on issuing new permits, not stopping existing drilling (a move many experts believe would be unsafe).

That pattern extends as well to social-science surveys:

Seventy percent of American parents and 53.5 percent of American adolescents believe sex before marriage is wrong, according to a federally funded study released Monday by the Administration of Children and Families, an agency within the Health and Human Services Department....
Although the report on the study was completed by February 2009, HHS did not release it until [August 2010], even when asked to do so -- prompting speculation that the Obama administration did not like the report's conclusions.

C. Quackery and Luddism

As I have noted before, while liberal commentators are quick to deride the beliefs of ordinary citizens on the Right, there is plenty of fodder on the Left; Moe Lane notes a Pew survey showing that "somewhere around 30% of Democrats believe in a whole range of New Age stuff, explicitly including astrology." And as I observed in Part I of this series, one of the ugliest manifestations of that worldview is the campaign by hysterics like Jenny McCarthy and Robert Kennedy jr. against vaccine manufacturers, and the inevitable (as a result) popular movement against vaccinating children. The grim result: an outbreak of whooping cough in California so bad even the relentlessly anti-modern-medicine Huffington Post was forced to acknowledge it:

State health officials reported Thursday that California is on track to break a 55-year record for whooping cough infections in an epidemic that has already claimed the lives of nine infants.
At least 4,017 cases of the highly contagious illness have been reported in California, according to the state. Data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control show 11,466 cases nationwide, though the federal numbers are known to lag behind local reporting.

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Many parents forgo vaccines for their children because of concerns about autism, typically fueled by misinformation on the Internet, said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a University of California-San Diego professor and fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The vaccines against whooping cough are free of the additive thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury that has been the subject of a long-running public debate about whether it can cause autism.

A federal ruling in March said there was no connection between autism and thimerosal....

An Associated Press analysis found that 127 of the 7,174 public and private schools in California reported 2009 whooping cough immunization rates of 50 percent or less for kindergartners.

D. Propaganda

Doug Bandow looked back in June at the career of the late Stephen Schneider, a global warming alarmist who had, earlier in his career, been a "new Ice Age" alarmist (oh, that settled science!). Here's an extended quote from a 1992 piece on Schneider, which captures all too well the mindset of his school of scientist-activist (or perhaps, activist-scientist):

"It is journalistically irresponsible to present both sides [of the global warming question] as though it were a question of balance," he told the Boston Globe recently. "Given the distribution of views, with groups like the National Academy of Science expressing strong scientific conern, it is irresponsible to give equal time to a few people standing out in left field."...
But there are good reasons for balanced reporting, and one of them is none other than Stephen Schneider. Those who quote him run the risk of using information from someone who can't seem to get his story (to say nothing of his facts) straight. Two decades ago he was warning the world that "a cooling trend has set in, perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age."...

One of Mr. Schneider's problems is that the doesn't let data get in the way of a good scare. "Looking at every bump and wiggle of the record is a waste of time," he once said. "So, I don't set very much store by looking at the direct evidence."

His methods are admittedly more unorthodox. "To avert the risk [of global warming] we need to get some braod-based support, to capture public imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make some simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

That would be hyperbole like when Robert F. Kennedy jr. blamed Haley Barbour for Hurricane Katrina in the pages of the Huffington Post, just before the hurricane hit New Orleans: "Perhaps it was Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast." Or, more recently, Al Gore getting caught spinning bogus science again at the Copenhagen summit:

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a "ballpark figure" several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

And it's not just climate science but the nanny state too: as Jacob Sullum has documented in Reason, New York City's war on salt rests on a very shaky scientific foundation.

The Left's menace to science continues, unabated. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Comments

The salt issue is definitely a joke. My brother, a doctor, put it this way: if you are otherwise healthy, the only way salt is going to be a problem is if you eat a gallon of it, then someone hits you in the liver with a baseball bat.

Posted by: MVH at October 8, 2010 4:01 PM

And when should we expect the report on the Flat Earthers, Evolution Deniers, Intelligent Designers, We Didn't Land on the Mooners, anything to do with James Watters, etc., etc. etc., etc., etc.

Another in the long list of posts to be filed in either the "I'm shocked there's gambling in Casablanca" file or the "The Right is Pure and the Left is Sullied" file.

Posted by: jim at October 8, 2010 5:21 PM

Are any of those groups under the guise of "saving the earth" proposing or ramming through laws and policies, based on faux science, that will cost trillions of dollars and give govt control over vast areas of the econony and your personal life. No is the answer, right? Wake up.

Posted by: dch at October 8, 2010 5:33 PM

First off the whole "Climategate" thing is so utterly overblown and ridiculous and SUCH a product of Fox News that of course uses the Weekly World News as source material that you enter a danger territory of sounding like a Truther when you buy everything that particular venture is selling. Secondly, if you don't think that the alleged science that industries that y'all love like Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Energy, Big religion etc. engage in don't cost you, me and all of us money and safety (not to mention IQ points) you are more than fooling yourself.

Again, my point is that pointing out stuff like "The Obama Admin covered up information regarding the Gulf Oil Leak." is third-grade level stuff. Wow! Politicians covered up stuff to cover their own ass? No way?!

Posted by: jim at October 8, 2010 5:44 PM

Dude, Global warming, global cooling, global climate change or whatever this BS lie is being called today has been used as boogie man for the last 30 years to justify trillions of dollars of laws and policies. The earth's climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years, the polar ice caps have been melting for the last 10 thousand years, geological studies show that for 80% of Earths existence we haven't had polar ice caps, the oceans have risen 400 feet in the last 10 k years before the industrial revolution, etc

Putting the word Big before things, I don't know what that means -I will tell you that we live in a world thanks to those companies where many diseases that we killing people just 20, 30, 40 years ago are now completely treatable and curable. Where for millenia people had to worry about starving, now in developed countries we have to worry about losing weight and now I can live in a heated house during the cold of winter and turn on lights and the oven. What do the global warming/environmental scam artists provide????? NOTHING They produce NOTHING. They are parasites on society, that are trying to control everything while investing and producing nothing. Wake up. There is no equality between big companies and environmental groups. There is no equality between say a company that creates, builds and runs nuclear power plants and the people that protest against them. There is no equality between Pfizer and a bunch of trust fund protestors complaining about how much a drug costs. Pfizer is the one that came up with the idea, spent 100s millions developing, testing, licensing and marketing a drug and some jerk off at the end is going to tell them what they can charge to recoup their expenditures and profit they can make. Wake up.

Posted by: dch at October 8, 2010 6:10 PM

jim, I have no idea where you got the idea that the CRU story was driven mainly by Fox News. But you evidently watch a lot more of the network than I do. That story was mainly driven by McIntrye and other bloggers/gadflies who fought for years to get CRU's data, which CRU for now-obvious reasons resisted sharing. Which is a red flag of bogus science in itself.

I've seen no data indicating that Moon Landing Truthers are predominantly on one side of the political spectrum. And as dch said, most of the anti-science nonsense that comes from the Right has little impact on government and the economy other than people in a handful of states having fights over what to teach in public school (I'll touch a bit on the evolution stuff in Part III if I ever get it finished, but that's hardly an under-covered story; I know we have commenters on this site who consider it the most important public policy issue of the age).

Posted by: Crank at October 8, 2010 7:09 PM

Hmm, do you not know what it means because you're stupid or just obtuse. The latter seems more the case. Your logic that if someone or something creates things that are helpful they are essentially exempt from accountability on their dubious doings and dealings. You don't want to believe in many things so you choose not to based on your outlook on the world. Fine. Typical of a righty to be convinced they are right about everything and willing to ignore stuff as long as the people on what you perceive as your side doing it. It would be painfully easy to bring up examples of Big Ag (that means large agricultural companies), Big Pharma (that means large pharmaceutical companies) and the like that have done things to enhance the bottom line that flew in the face of their own scientific findings and put health and lives at risk. People have died, no, actually lots and lots of people have died due to things that went well past pure negligence. Wake up.

Posted by: jim at October 8, 2010 7:15 PM

Crank, you only look at half the world from what I can tell based on what you write. Simply because you choose to ignore the pseudo-science (and outright lies) employed by large corporations that have cost us untold billions and people's lives does not make it disappear. While Flat Earthers are clearly kooks they tend to be survivalists, anti-government, gun owners and very religious. If you want to tell me that describes what y'all perceive as the average lefty you go right ahead. And, yes, Fox and there subsidiaries barely mentioned the CRU story. You don't have to watch Fox at all to have heard their blather on that.

Posted by: jim at October 8, 2010 8:50 PM

Cry me a river, Lefties. You guys have been lying and shading facts since Walter Duranty to push your vision of collectivism and central planning. Then you get your shot and cram that health reform monstrosity down our throats but now we're supposed to throw away caution and believe you?

Hey, you can sit on this planet and fry like the rest of us. You're the ones who blew your credibility and you have no one to blame for this but yourselves. No one believes the Earth is warming because the people who are telling us it is are known liars.

Posted by: spongeworthy at October 9, 2010 11:59 AM

The global warming theory is plausible - the Economist, for one, has stopped questioning it - but the models themselves suffer, primarily, from questionable data - the data is incomplete; the measurements themselves, especially the old ones, are of questionable accuracy; the test sites have changed over time; the sites weren't randomly situated around the globe, etc. The data was "adjusted" for these effects, but we don't know how because no one saved the raw data, and at the end of the day, that's not good enough for requiring the world to revert to economic life in the 13th century. Keep researching by all means, but don't call it settled. The CRU emails were more of an embarrassment than anything else.

I ignore the anti-corporatist elements of the left. Dch mainly has it right, and when corporations do wrong, there are always courts.

As for the right, its biggest black eye is the evolution business, but there is no point even arguing with those people, as they believe it as a matter of faith. I don't think any scientific argument could really persuade them otherwise.

Posted by: MVH at October 9, 2010 2:59 PM

Oh how I wish the left had good, sound science. You know, like "creation science." And political figures like "Senator" O'Donnell who does not believe in evolution because she has never seen a monkey evolve into a human.

Posted by: Magrooder at October 10, 2010 1:44 AM

As gravity and evolution are facts, not theories, it is fact that greenhouse gasses are trapped in the atmosphere and contribute to the warming of the planet.

The unknowns include how fast that process is occurring, the extent to which man made GHGs contribute and what, if anything the global community should try to do.

Those are all fair questions subject to rigorous debate. If all one listened to were Faux News (dch and spongeworthy -- that's you), one would have no idea what the issues actually are.

Enjoy the echo chamber, let's Crank's one-sided tripe give you a rise in your Levi's, just understand that in the real world, people understand otherwise.

Posted by: Magrooder at October 10, 2010 1:51 AM

There's a difference between being anti-corporate (I would call myself wildly suspicious, oft times incredibly irritated and do my best to avoid corporately produced material when alternatives available) and recognizing that there are positive contributions while knowing that there are deep problems with large entities. Crank writes that "bogus" climate science costs our country money biut refuses to acknowledge that many, many types of corporations have made up science, lied about science, hid scientific evidence or some combination all all of these and that these actions have lined their pockets at the expense of ours not to mention taking people's lives in the wake. Sure, there are courts but there is no guarantee there and in a country where justice can be and is purchased that is not super reassuring. As well the issue is whether conservatives just make shit up. If you can't see that answer as yes then you simply choose to ignore reality. Crank's argument is totally one-sided and thus mostly useless.

Posted by: jim at October 10, 2010 2:08 PM

"The unknowns include how fast that process is occurring, the extent to which man made GHGs contribute and what, if anything the global community should try to do.. . . Those are all fair questions subject to rigorous debate. "

Interesting points (or maybe just dissembling). First, those challenging global warming (and not Fox News, but bloggers and scientists who have been following this for years) ARE debating - which includes questioning the quality of the other side's data, the biases of their experts, the processes by which 'peer review' provides a real sanity-check on the authors, demanding access to the algorithms used to compile and analyze the data, a full accounting of the assumptions that were used to reach their conclusions, as well as their treatment of contradictory evidence. As evidence of their success, note that the issue has been re-christened from 'global warming' to 'climate change' (which certainly makes 'predicting' an outcome much easier).

Second, the Dems aren't debating how fast the process is occurring, they've bought (or, more cynically, are selling) that it's happening now and if we don't act RIGHT AWAY, it will be TOO LATE. They aren't debating the extent to which man's activities have on climate, they've seen Al Gore's movie and bought that man has been criminally negligent to Gaia and that if we don't act RIGHT AWAY, it will be TOO LATE. And they aren't debating what the global response should be to the problem man may or not contribute to, they are submitting legislation (and passing administrative rules - outside of Congressional review) which directs that we have to act RIGHT NOW, consequences schmonsequences.

Republicans would love to have these debates, but the Democrats reject that there is anything TO debate (because that calls their justifications into question). And it is apparently beyond the ken of some of the commenters here that the group that always strives for greater government control over individuals and the private sector just happens to see that the only solution (to the 'problem' that they won't debate) is more government control and less individual freedom and higher taxes and fees. Nahhh, no reason to see the Democrats as merely fear mongering or to be skeptical of their real agenda.

Posted by: TANSTAAF Lunch at October 10, 2010 7:17 PM

It always makes me chuckle when I see the lefties use Fox News to denounce anything they don't agree with.

The lefties have CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and heaven knows PBS, in their corner. One the right is precisely one TV/Cable news outlet; Fox News.

The left can't accept that one solitary outlet disagrees with their world view.

It just goes to show that liberals are the most intolerant and narrow-minded people there are.

Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at October 10, 2010 10:14 PM

Wow, "Faux" News? That is a really clever put-down. I bet you have oodles of well-reasoned analysis to rebut the claims you disagree with, but with such a clever putdown at your disposal, why waste time with analysis? Heh, "Faux" News. Classic.

Posted by: Linus at October 10, 2010 10:58 PM

Tom the Redhunter,
New around here? Maybe you can take a shot at this one. Since corporations own the nation's major media outlets, and you contend they are liberally biased, would you think 1) that corporations love how liberal policies add to their bottom line better than conservative policies, or 2) corporations don't act in their own economic best interest?
Extra credit for explaining how the media ran with Whitewater for 7+ years, but dropped the Downing Street Memos in less than 48 hours.

Posted by: Berto at October 12, 2010 1:20 AM

Aw look Tom, Berto invited you to play with his chew toy!

Posted by: Crank at October 12, 2010 1:44 AM

Linus,

If you don't realize that Fox News is a joke, then I fear for your sanity.

Posted by: Magrooder at October 12, 2010 5:24 AM

No worries, Tom. Crank's been stumped by that riddle for years. Although he's really easy to stump if you lay out facts instead of what Hannity told him.
BTW, the answer is the "liberal bias" meme is just another right-wing lie.

Posted by: Berto at October 12, 2010 1:53 PM

Berto, it's not all that perplexing. Judging by the plunging profits, viewership, and circulation of the liberal media outlets, it would appear that they have not been acting in their own economic best interests. The NYT finally turned a profit after slashing payrolls to rightsize their workforce to their actual customer base. Newsweek magazine sold for $1 (not one issue, but the whole works).

Posted by: TANSTAAF Lunch at October 12, 2010 7:54 PM

TANSTAAF Lunch,
So your answer is that corporations don't act in their own economic best interest.
Yet another good argument for not privatizing social security.

Posted by: Berto at October 12, 2010 8:11 PM

No, Berto, its a good argument for not investing in those companies that pursue a political agenda at the expense of their investors. Let people keep control of their money rather than have to accept a suspect government IOU.

Posted by: TANSTAAF Lunch at October 12, 2010 8:23 PM

TANSTAAF Lunch,
Let's leave aside the fact there is no such thing as an informed investor.
Someone's not looking at his right-wing crib notes, which states: Corporations good, government bad.
It says NOTHING about picking and choosing corporations.

Also, you sound like a typical "blame America first" guy as you rant about how the USA isn't good enough to meet their obligations.
--------
All this just to make believe there is an iota of truth in the "corporate media is liberal" lie. You might want to stop digging soon.

Posted by: Berto at October 13, 2010 11:52 AM

I guess I'll just have to accept the fact that there is no such thing as an informed Berto. Strawman arguments are no way to win your point. You're clearly bound by absolutes - ALL right wingers think ALL corporations are good and ALL government is bad? not ONE IOTA of truth to corporate media being liberal - any of which are disproven by a single example. Consider how the right views the New York Times Company and the military. Just don't think about how we would view the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - that might make your head explode. And that's an unsual connection you make to the 'blame America first' crowd, they're generally considered to be all about . . . blaming America 'first'.

Posted by: TANSTAAF Lunch at October 13, 2010 3:14 PM

Sorry TANSTAAF Lunch. It wasn't me who said corporations good, government bad. That was the right-wing. Every day. For the last 30 years.
Since you don't use absolutes like me: How does the ENTIRE right view the NYT and the military?
On the one hand, I would think favorably, since the NYT was as much to blame for pushing the Iraq War debacle as anybody (thanks f'n "liberals" at NYT). OTOH, it could be unfavorably, since the Iraq War exposed the greatest-funded military as pretty useless and inefficient after they were fought to a 6-year standstill by a handful of teenagers.

Posted by: Berto at October 13, 2010 10:26 PM

Wrong again, you have ascribed that notion to the right. I used it to show the deficiency that is your 'logic'. Funny though, how you claim not to speak in absolutes one sentence after saying the WHOLE right wing has said that EVERY DAY for the last 30 years. This is the problem with your strawman argumentation - when someone calls BS on you, you try to squirm away by putting words in other people's mouths, changing the subject, and then you cite a single example as if it proves an all or nothing proposition. And you fuel your illogic with ignorance - 'standstill'?, 'handful of teenagers'? Weak.

Posted by: TANSTAAF Lunch at October 14, 2010 1:50 PM

Sorry, I was confused by this line: "Consider how the right views the New York Times Company and the military."
Now I realize you meant: Consider how some on the right view parts of the New York Times and some of the military".

Mea Culpa. Now I'm hip to conservatives believing that corporations aren't always better than the government, that government isn't always the problem, that taxes can do good for the citizens of the nation. So all that whining and crying from conservatives about keeping the government away from medicare is just a bunch of BS (who knew?).
Thanks again. Now I can just dismiss the misplaced ranting of conservatives about smaller government and anyone who wants to regulate industry as being a Marxist. And remind those who make those claims that specifics are needed, because we both know those are nothing but empty words.
Teach me, TANSTAAF Lunch. Who did we beat in Iraq, and what did we win?

Posted by: Berto at October 14, 2010 2:29 PM

"...the Dems aren't debating how fast the process is occurring, they've bought (or, more cynically, are selling) that it's happening now and if we don't act RIGHT AWAY, it will be TOO LATE. They aren't debating the extent to which man's activities have on climate, they've seen Al Gore's movie and bought that man has been criminally negligent to Gaia and that if we don't act RIGHT AWAY, it will be TOO LATE. And they aren't debating what the global response should be to the problem man may or not contribute to, they are submitting legislation (and passing administrative rules - outside of Congressional review) which directs that we have to act RIGHT NOW, consequences schmonsequences. "

As a recent graduate of the TANSTAAF Lunch school of debate, let me just say that this is nothing but rubbish, bullshit, and a pack of lies. First of all, not ALL Dems are selling the idea that Global Warming is happening now and that if we don't act now it will be too late. I know of at least a handful of Dems who have done no such thing. Ergo, this argument is nonsense. Also, I know of one Democrat who hasn't seen Al Gore's movie. I could go on and on pointing out his lying, but I'll just stop at those two.
TANSTAAF Lunch obviously can't make this argument without having to resort to gross generalizations and flat out lying.

Posted by: Berto at October 14, 2010 3:24 PM

Crank,

This one should bring a smile to your face. Apparently, it's possible to double down by using quackery to analyze questionable science - check this one out:

"The Astrology of Global Warming"

http://macroastro.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/the-astrology-of-global-warming/

You can't make this up:

"Over the last decade much fanfare has been made over global warming. Recently the issue of water supply due to drought both in Australia and overseas, particularly sub-Sahara Africa, has made headlines. The astrology of the ages can indicate where the effects of pollution will be felt and the time frames involved. This is accomplished by examining wheels within wheels within wheels."

I suspect mind-altering drugs also are involved.

Posted by: MVH at October 14, 2010 4:23 PM

You're still confused, Berto. I was telling YOU to consider how, according to your rule, the right views the NYT and the military. According to you, the right would be all be pro-NYT and all anti-military. If you need convincing that that isn't the case, well I'll just leave it there. And, even though one might agree with some things the government does, that does not mean that they forfeit their right to disagree with other actions the government takes. And just because you know people who aren't drafting the legislation does not refute what I wrote.

Posted by: TANSTAAFL at October 14, 2010 7:19 PM

Unlike the Flat Earthers who are religious kook that derive their craziness from Biblical passages (love to see those) I think Astrology sort of runs all over the place. I'm willing to concede it certainly has more followers at Phish concerts than Young Republican meetings but I knew friends' mothers when I was growing up that were into it and they definitely weren't playing Grateful Dead 8 track tapes while they were doing it. I think people who are really into astrology come from all walks of life.

Posted by: jim at October 14, 2010 9:14 PM

Jim,

You could even point to Nancy Reagan for astrology, but generally speaking it is a left-wing thing, and it's definitely nonsense. As I've mentioned, the whole creationist movement is black eye, and I don't like to see religious beliefs used as a justification for public policy.

Posted by: MVH at October 15, 2010 11:20 AM

Astrology is kooky and I think there are likely more people that would identify as politically left that are into it but I'm pretty sure it is nearly as apolitical, for the most part, as stuff like this gets. Would it be horridly sexist to say that it seems that the astrology bug bites mostly women? Eh, people have been using planetary alignments and stars for destiny/forecast/giant event stuff for thousands of years. If there is something less harmful than astrology as far as a way of looking at the world I'm not sure I know what it is.

Posted by: jim at October 15, 2010 1:18 PM

"om the Redhunter,
New around here? Maybe you can take a shot at this one. Since corporations own the nation's major media outlets, and you contend they are liberally biased, would you think 1) that corporations love how liberal policies add to their bottom line better than conservative policies, or 2) corporations don't act in their own economic best interest?
Extra credit for explaining how the media ran with Whitewater for 7+ years, but dropped the Downing Street Memos in less than 48 hours."

Wow, can you really believe that the news outlets I mentioned are not liberal? You must really be out there.

1) yes, many do.
2) yes, they do. And the perception is that adopting liberal policies increases their bottom line. For example, many pander to the enviro-extremists and babble about how "green" they are.

Sure they talked about Whitewater, but it was all page A12 stuff and never went anywhere.

The Downing Street memos!?!?!?!? omg those things were fourth- or fifth-hand information and didn't amount to a hill of beans. Even MSNBC figured that out.

Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at October 16, 2010 2:36 PM

Spent my time to read all of the comments, however I really loved the article Baseball Crank: Comment on POLITICS/SCIENCE: Science and its Enemies on the Left: An Update. It proved to be very useful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here! I'll grab your feed, please continue posting!

Posted by: Liz Jasica at October 27, 2010 7:32 AM