Monday, October 13, 2014

The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown

Continuing to rely on climate-model warming projections based on high, model-derived values of climate sensitivity skews the cost-benefit analyses and estimates of the social cost of carbon. This can bias policy decisions. The implications of the lower values of climate sensitivity in our paper, as well as similar other recent studies, is that human-caused warming near the end of the 21st century should be less than the 2-degrees-Celsius “danger” level for all but the IPCC’s most extreme emission scenario.
This slower rate of warming—relative to climate model projections—means there is less urgency to phase out greenhouse gas emissions now, and more time to find ways to decarbonize the economy affordably. It also allows us the flexibility to revise our policies as further information becomes available.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global-warming-statistical-meltdown-1412901060

Climate Science is not Settled

Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies. To do otherwise is a great disservice to climate science itself.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565

The Global-Warming Debate: Matt Ridley Responds

As for the hockey stick, Mr. Plait repeats long-discredited defenses of the graph, including the suggestion that other selections of data have confirmed it. Surely he knows (if only because it is in my article) that these confirmations rely on including Tiljander’s lake sediments or bristlecone pines, but that if you leave these now-debunked data sets out, then the effect vanishes. Please read Climate Audit to verify this. Here’s a quote:
“As CA readers are aware, the ‘big news’ of Mann et al 2008 was its claim to have got a Hockey Stick without Graybill’s bristlecone chronologies (camouflaged as a ‘no-dendro’ reconstruction). CA readers are aware that this claim depended on their use of contaminated modern portion of the Tiljander sediments and that the original claims for a ‘validated’ no-dendro reconstruction prior to 1500 fell apart, even though no retraction or corrigendum to the original Mann et al (PNAS 2008) has been issued.As we learned (from an inline comment by Gavin Schmidt in July 2010), Mann et al have conceded that these claims fell apart, but did so using a “trick” (TM- climate science.) Instead of acknowledging the false assertions at the journal in which the assertions were made (PNAS), they acknowledged the failure of the no-Tiljander no-bristlecone reconstructions deep in the Supplementary Information of a different paper (Mann et al, Science 2009) – a trick for which the term ‘Mike’s PNAS trick’ is surely appropriate (though the term ‘Mike’s Science trick’ also merits consideration.)”
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2013/07/09/the-global-warming-debate-matt-ridley-responds/

Friday, October 10, 2014

Abortion

In a recent Gallup poll, 80 percent of Americans believe abortions in the third trimester should be illegal. In a Huffington Post-funded poll, respondents favored a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks by a margin of 59 to 30 percent. In Quinnipiac University Poll, 55 percent supported a ban restricting abortions on viable unborn children – with women, whose views we should respect, supporting the ban by a 60-25 margin.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/09/why-doesnt-mark-udall-have-to-answer-for-his-extremism/

Saturday, August 23, 2014

QOTD - Pirates Cove

This is exactly what we’ve been talking about: “climate change” is being used as a means to push far left Progressive (nice fascist) Big Government policies. Control of economies, control of people, restrictions on business, restrictions on private investment, government doing it all, taxing people out the ying yang, government owning businesses (particularly infrastructure and energy, which gives Government control over your life). Look back at that quote from Klein again
“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.”
We are paying attention. To bad the average brain dead Liberal isn’t. They might see the reality, and understand that they will not be immune to the fascist tendencies of their Warmist leaders.

Monday, August 18, 2014

HRC - Lord helps us avoid her as President via ASHQ

Legendarily Entitled Politician Has Rock-Star Demands In Speaking Engagement Contracts

—Ace

* $225,000
* a private jet to ferry her hither and yon
* the "presidential suite" at a local hotel of her choosing
* the guarantee that nothing she says will be recorded by any means, video or audio, and that the only record of her appearance will be a stenographer's transcription
I think the reason for that last one is that she doesn't want video of her speeches getting out and thereby ruining the Money Farm that is her public speaking business.
Because I don't think any of her speeches are new. I think she's giving these people basically the same canned speech, with a couple of paragraphs about some timely event. But mostly, just the same damn speech every time, at $225,000 per.
So what are these people actually paying for if they're just getting her canned campaign speech?
Seems to me they're not getting a speech -- they're getting an access. And, of course, they're getting a legal means of donating cash money to Hillary directly.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

QOTD - Murray Rothbard

The American Enterprise Institue has this infamous quote from economist Murray Rothbard:
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”

Monday, June 16, 2014

Education

The objects of ... primary education [which] determine its character and limits [are]: To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed. 
--Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Qotd - Warren Meyer

"Universities are, if anything, institutions based on ideas and thought.  So it has always been amazing to me that university diversity programs focus not on having a diversity of ideas, but on have a diversity of skin pigment and reproductive plumbing.  In fact, if anything, most universities seem to be aspiring towards creating an intellectual monoculture.  Diversity of opinion, of politics, and of general outlook among prospective students are not even decision-making variables in any educational institution I know of.  And within the faculty, many institutions seem intent on purging from their ranks any single voice that diverges from the majoritarian view. "
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2014/04/education-and-affirmative-action.html
Or as blogger Kate Werk likes to say, what's the opposite of diversity? University. 

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Red Privilege

RED PRIVILEGE

Red-baiting was one of the more fantastic inventions of the left. Suddenly pointing out that someone was a member of a mass murdering ideology bent on world conquest… was worse than actually being a member of that ideology.

Red-baiting was tacky, hateful and everything that enlightened people didn’t want to be. It was perfectly all-right for a Communist to say he was one. It was alright for an admiring fellow traveler to say it. But not for anyone who thought that mass enslavement and murder under the red flag were bad things.

Red-baiting gave the Marxists and Communists immunity from criticism. Questioning their politics had become worse than their actual politics.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Uncle Miltie

 “People have a great misconception in this way, they think the way you solve things is by electing the right people,” Friedman once said. “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that isn’t the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”
h/t to W. James Antel III

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Michael Crichton on consensus

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

My jaw dropped when I read the MoDo sentence

Seven years after the feminists tried to bring down a Supreme Court nominee for sexual harassment — but really for his conservative stances — they went into contortions to defend Clinton. 
(my emphasis)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/dowd-the-gospel-according-to-paul.html?ref=opinion

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Even David Brooks gets it

That’s because raises in the minimum wage are not targeted at the right people. Only 11 percent of the workers affected by such an increase come from poor households. Nearly two-thirds of such workers are the second or third earners living in households at twice the poverty line or above.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/opinion/brooks-the-inequality-problem.html

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Cold

h/t neveryetmelted