voluntaryXchange

NPR Biased?

I listened to Intelligence Squared* while the kids played on a parking lot snow mountain. The topic was “Are Obama’s Economic Policies Working Effectively?” The format of the show is a 2 team, 6 person (position statement) debate.

On the pro-Obama side were a current administration official, a former administration official, and a non-administration official suggested by the administration. Fair enough.

Opposed to this was a team, two of whose member’s are to the left of Obama (recall that Obama was one of the leftmost Democrats in the Senate, and this administration is the most leftist is 30 years).

The lone conservative was Alan Meltzer, who would be a really great choice when the show acquires a time machine so they can debate the October 1979 change in Federal Reserve policy. I’m not knocking Meltzer, but let’s face it, he was one of the towering economic intellects of the late 1960’s, best known for his support of Monetarism – a philosophy that never quite had its moment before it was swamped by new classicism, who’s implications the Obama administration regularly poo-poohs in favor of even newer behaviorist fads.

BTW: Meltzer went 5th, and got the first ovation of the show, with an easy slam dunk of the mix of platitudes and rehashed Marxism that preceded him.

* Is it just me, or is the title of the show pretentious?

Technorati Tags: npr,bias,intelligence,squared,obama

If We Starve People, Then They’ll Take Climate Change Seriously!

From Tim Worstall (discussing proposals to limit fertilizer production because it might be related to global warming):

… But note that it’s not climate change nor population pressure that’s causing this. It’s our reaction to the threat of climate change.

And of course we have choices about how to react to that threat. And the most obvious and basic choice is not to make choices which are worse than the climate change itself.

… Huge numbers of people seem to have missed the point that there are always trade offs and there are some trade offs that we really don’t want to make. [emphasis added]

Technorati Tags: global,warming,climate,change,anthropogenic,fertilizer

An Enviro-Blog Caves On Climategate

SmartPlanet is a fairly level headed journalist’s blog, but definitely one oriented towards the environmentalist’s default positions. Here’s an excerpt from today’s post:

So now what? Climate change needs a do-over on many fronts. First, the science has to be scrubbed. There’s enough doubt here to give folks serious reservations about plunging headfirst into big legislation or economic overhauls in a recession in the name of global warming. Do the investigations. Put the data out there for the world to see. And listen to folks …

Umm … folks like me who’ve been saying since the early 90’s that the statistics just don’t add up.

Technorati Tags: climategate

WFT: Tiger Woods

What else can you say?

Technorati Tags: tiger,woods

Amanda Knox Found Guilty

It was just announced. Check your newswire.

Technorati Tags: amanda,knox,guilty

Climate Source Data Destroyed

Times Online reported today that CRU destroyed the original source data that is the basis for their climate data series (one of four used by the IPCC).

Umm … why would they need to burn their bridges? Just asking.

Technorati Tags: climate,data,destroy,source,original

What Climategate Is About – An Analogy

Many are missing the point: it isn’t about a conspiracy or about nastiness.

It’s about having your positions tested.

Let me offer an analogy to help explain what the CRU hack has revealed about the A list of pro-AGW scientists.

They believe they’re writing great novels.

Their evidence is that they think their own novels are great.

To check that they swap their great novels with other people who believe they’ve also written great novels, and then they glad hand.

But their approach to the broad body of potential readers is defensive: they don’t want to actually show anyone their great novels because they might point out their flaws.

So they respond with elitism: they have patrons who can pull levers who do see value in their great novels. And only the patrons count.

They’re bitter, wounded, English professors who are afraid the story motivated by long past teenage angst and isolation, perfected in middle-age, might just be seen as the navel-gazing of mediocrity.

That could explain a lot of conspirational nastiness in the pro-AGW crowd.

These people need to grow up and realize they have a role to play – a role that’s noble, worthy, and important even if they’re wrong. And frankly, the chance of them being proved right would be better if they’d lighten up.

Technorati Tags: climategate,cru,analogy,great,novel

“It Depends on the Meaning of ‘Is’ Is” – Anthropogenic Global Warming Edition

Let me summarize:

The good guys produced evidence of anthropogenic global warming.

The bad guys pointed out that it looked like the good guys cheated.

The good guys denied doing what the bad guys said they were doing, truthfully, because they were doing something even worse.

Now new guys came along and hacked the good guys stuff. The good guys don’t like this, so the new guys are now the new bad guys.

The (old) bad guys read the new bad guys stuff and found confirmation of their accusations, because some other good guys wrote to the original good guys about how they’ cheated the same way.

The other good guys used the word “hide” to describe what they were doing to the good guys in communication that they didn’t want the bad guys to see.

But the global warming do-gooders still think they’re the good guys. 

Just ask ‘em.

Technorati Tags: hadley,cru,hide,decline,mann,jones

Hadley’s Rules

Why did a government funded scientific agency have a marketing plan for how to sell anthropogenic global warming to the public on its servers?

Here’s an excerpt:

The language we use to describe the challenge of climate change is huge, hyperbolic and almost pornographic; the language of the solutions is often all about ‘small, cheap and easy’. We need to make solutions sound more heroic, use grander terms, and make the scale of the solution sound equal to the scale of the problem.

Somehow I don’t think the “hard science” climatologists were reading up on market because they think it’s just as hard.

Read the whole thing.

Via Steve Shark.

Technorati Tags: new,rules,game,hadley,cru,anthropogenic,global,warming

Exceptionally Undiplomatic Obama

WTF.

Obama said this in response to critics who grouse about whether it is offensive that KSM will be entitled to the rights of Americans when tried in America:

I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him …

WTF.

Does he not understand that conviction isn’t automatic?

Does he not understand that execution isn’t automatic?

Or, does he know full well that conviction is automatic, and execution is automatic in this case?

I don’t seriously believe the last one. But, if it’s true then this abrogation of the Constitution is clearer grounds for impeachment than anything we’ve seen in my lifetime. By far.

Is it possible we’ve elected a sociopath, who has no grounding to anything?

Technorati Tags: obama,ksm,convicted,death,penalty,gaffe,khaled,sheikh,mohammed