On Martha’s Vineyard, food store proprietor named Krem Miskevich has told lawyer and Harvard Law prof Alan Dershowitz that he can’t buy his delicious pierogis because the liberal Democrat has periodically defended Donald Trump in various columns and bad people (like Jeffrey Epstein) in criminal cases. Dershowitz has previously complained bitterly about how his progressive neighbors on the picturesque Massachusetts island community have excluded him from the social life there because he is regarded as a traitor to the cause of knee-jerk wokism.
In addition to being an illiberal bully and an American devoid of core American values like pluralism and respect for free expression, Miskevich is an ignorant idiot who doesn’t comprehend the role of lawyers in a democracy. Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Let me repeat that for any Miskeviches who might be drooling out there: Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Clarence Darrow didn’t approve of the character and conduct of child-killers Leopold and Loeb. John Adams did not endorse the conduct of the British soldiers who did the shooting in the Boston Massacre. This is enshrined in the lawyers’ Rules of Professional Conduct. It makes it possible for the 6th Amendment rights to a fair trial and legal representation to exist. Alan Dershowitz understands this. The pierogi-maker, a self-righteous fool, does not.
And yet, we are told, the Dershowitz’s wealthy, educated progressive neighbors are siding with the fool.
How did the American Left get this way? I have written here about similar efforts to punish conservatives, Republicans and their perceived allies by denying them services and products, beating them up, threatening them with violence, punishing them for having the “wrong” opinions. In an angry post about the Martha’s Vinyard episode, Jonathan Turley writes,
What is chilling is how hate is now celebrated on the left as a perverse type of virtue signaling.
We have seen how the left has embraced blacklisting, an abuse that was once associated with the McCarthy period. In 1950, columnist and civil libertarian Max Lerner penned a chilling prediction in the New York Post about the Red Scare: “There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes.”
It turns out it would come from the left. From the start of the first Trump Administration, restaurants refused to serve well-known Republicans and their families.
Calls for blacklisting have come from city councils to public interest groups. Others called for banning those “complicit” from college campuses, while still others demanded a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to “hold Trump and his enablers accountable for the crimes they have committed.” Daily Beast editor-at-large Rick Wilson added his own call for “humiliation,” “incarceration,” and even ritualistic suicides for Trump supporters in an unhinged, vulgar column.
Writers and editors have joined blacklisting efforts targeting Trump supporters, conservative justices, and authors like JK Rowling for their political views. It is all part of the Orwellian logic of the left, intolerance in the name of tolerance, blacklisting in the name of free speech.
We have also seen lawyers increasingly targeted by the left for their clients, a tactic once used against liberal lawyers representing unpopular criminal or civil clients. That includes the successful targeting of a Harvard professor for representing Weinstein. Many leading lawyers helped fund the Lincoln Project in its national effort to harass and abuse any lawyers representing the Republican party or President Trump.
Conservatives aren’t doing this; Republicans aren’t doing this. Only the Left, and it is signature significance. An ethical political party doesn’t tolerate such tactics. Civically literate Americans don’t either. The American Left is sick…soul sick, emotionally ill, mentally damaged. It no longer believes in democracy, and is reveling in its own rejection of America’s founding principles. Turley seems to think the situation is humorous, using sentences like, “The problem is that feeding on hate will never satiate people; they simply want more servings. That insatiable appetite is destroying this country and now Miskevich is contributing to it one pierogi at a time.”
It’s not funny. The nation needs two responsible political parties to make democracy work, and right now barely has one.
Now what?
Ethics Alarms 
it is very simple for me: I do not condone criminal behavior, but I defend criminals. I makes sure they get treated fairly.
I would not be too upset if every illegal immigrant magically woke up in their respective homelands tomorrow. However, I have no problem with my partners using every legal strategy to make sure that their legal rights are vindicated. If they have criminal problems, I do what I can to minimize any adverse effect on their immigration status (legal or otherwise).
-Jut
JM wrote: “The nation needs two responsible political parties to make democracy work, and right now barely has one.” I count 0. If they both keep unraveling (each in their own style of self-immolation) perhaps some new and less thoroughly threadbare parties can arise, as the Republican Party of Lincoln’s time arose to address the signature crisis of that time.
I doubt Musk’s idea for a party will be one of them, but he is correct that there is a broad appetite for something different from the two currently dominant brands, as evidenced by “neither” being the dominant political identity of registered voters…
The GOP has a basic core of policies and values. More than it had in Romney’s prime. Rule of law. Opposition to one-world government. Reduced government. Merit based advancement. No “good discrimination.” Local control of education; reform of corrupted institutions.Reduction of foreign aid and military involvement abroad. Support of Israel. Domestic energy production. Rejection of climate change ideology. The problem is that the party has very few responsible and able leaders, but compared to Democrats, the party is in great shape.
Holly, I do not understand your post, and would like you to clarify some points.
My first question is what you mean about the Republicans unraveling today? I see the Trump administration getting quite a lot of work done, and fulfilling the promises made during the election. Are you referring to Congress?
My second question is what you see as the signature crisis of this time?
This is the standard Dem/Lefty fallback “a pox on both their houses” move. It’s a “look at that shiny object over there” move. Completely disingenuous.
First, thank you for focusing on substance! Appreciate it.
CVB: My first question is what you mean about the Republicans unraveling today? I see the Trump administration getting quite a lot of work done, and fulfilling the promises made during the election. Are you referring to Congress?
ME: Good question. I see the Democrats as unravelling externally, the Republicans as unravelling internally. Hence the disintegration of the former is easily observable, while the latter still looks quite sound. Congress has managed to pass legislation in record time and with a slim majority, which is a considerable feat! And yes, the Trump administration has also been busily at work with some clear accomplishments in line with campaign promises. What I see as the structural unravelling at the core of the GOP is the transformation of what used to be a party with a reasonably coherent set of values (as articulated by JM) into a personality/strongman cult in which loyalty/submission to the leader trumps adherence to values and attention to the priorities of their constituents. While they are in power, this looks like unity and strength. But what will things look like in the post-Trump era? Succession issues are one of the ways empires fall apart and companies fail. However, whether this supposition is correct will await the next chapter.
CVB: My second question is what you see as the signature crisis of this time?
ME: Even better question! I don’t actually think we have a single signature crisis. Instead we seem to have multiple crises. One is the extreme wealth disparities and the associated power of billionaires, the political corruption facilitated by Citizens United, and the affordability crisis fueling a very deep and broad anger at elites, including the government (which is mostly populated at the top levels by the very or extremely wealthy). I see this as somewhat similar to the Robber Baron era. This crisis can theoretically be addressed by political means, and we are a wealthy country so we actually COULD afford to have a more broadly prosperous and economically secure citizenry but I expect this crisis will get worse before that happens. Another one is global: the transition from a more stable climate regime to a less stable climate regime (IMO it really matters not, re weather consequences, whether and to what degree this has been affected by the industrial revolution). More extreme and destructive fires, floods, the rise in sea level, etc. are making life more precarious and unpredictable in physical terms, as the wealth disparity crisis is making life more precarious in economic terms for more and more people. The immigration crisis is another one, which I anticipate will get worse as the volume of climate refugees increases, exacerbating the internal displacement of people from cities unable to cope with sea level rise.
I will respond to the first point.
My view is that Trump is a transformational leader of the GOP, and the GOP has been a party in transformation since the Presidential election of 2016.
The Trump style GOP has a platform that is different than that of the old style GOP of GWH Bush, GW Bush, Mitt Romney and John McCain at a number of points:
Aside from that, and in line with past GOP tradition, Trump is robustly patriotic and pro law and order. Although Trump is less outspoken on matters that interest family value tradcons, he still deserves credit for the Dobbs decision which resolved the issue of abortion away from the GOP at a federal level, and allows the GOP on other issues such as DEI and woke extremism on all matters “trans” such as males in women’s sports.
This has resulted in a change of the GOP electorate, namely a move of blue collar workers away from the Democrats to the Republicans, making the GOP the party of the common people who earn less than six figures, while the Democrats have become the party of the coastal elites earning more than six figures.
As Trump’s emphasis on immigration enforcement benefits people with low skills on the labor market, and reduces crime, the GOP will become more attractive to minorities in poor neighborhoods who want to escape poverty and welfare. This gives the GOP an opportunity to increase his base among blacks and Hispanics, as last elections showed.
There are still a lot of old-style GOP in congress with seniority and power (Cornyn, Graham, Thune; Tillis and McConnell will leave in 2026) who will be slowly phased out in coming elections.
Trump will be out in 2028, and it looks there is a great candidate for a successor: Vice President JD Vance. Besides that, there are a couple of governors and senators who may be good candidates such as DeSantis, Cruz. The GOP definitively have a better field than the Democrats.
As Trump has achieved major successes in Congress as well (e.g. the Big Beautiful Bill), the GOP seems to be well-positioned for the future.
Regarding the personality cult, I do not think there is one and there surely will not be after 2028. His outsized public presence is a direct result of the Trump Derangement Syndrome of the Democrats.
CVB: “His outsized public presence is a direct result of the Trump Derangement Syndrome of the Democrats.”
Oh, that’s an interesting take. Although he does clearly have some fanatical followers (the MAGA version of Deadheads decked out head to toe in merch) it is definitely the case that the Dems have only been able to win elections by focusing on Trump. So it that sense he may well prove more important to the Dems than the GOP.
Thanks also for your in-depth analysis of the changing nature of the GOP and Dem coalitions. It will indeed be interesting to see how the continuing re-alignment unfolds….
Holly,
I am sorry to only poke at a single point here on the discussion, but there is too much here to talk about in a single comment, and well, I love discussing climate.
Why do you claim that we are in a less stable climate? Where are climate refugees?
From the data available to me, the rise of the sea level is practically insignificant. 3.9 inches over 100 years is not very much, and some of that measurement is debatable. Most coastal towns are seeing no important change to their way of life with the changing sea level. Where are you seeing people who are being impacted by this linear and very small rise? Instead, I see first world countries increasing their coastal presence significantly, where they would be overcome by rising sea levels, if they were doing so worryingly. Third world countries, by and large, are also not having issues with rising water in their coastal villages.
I am also wondering where you are getting data that suggests that people are being negatively impacted by the climate. We are seeing that climate disasters, from both an economic and human lives standpoint, are having a diminishing cost overall. Sure, they get a lot of publicity, and maybe they cover more area, but the cost of repairs is growing smaller unless the fire is drastically mismanaged (see LA). Natural disasters do happen, but generally, the loss of human life is decreasing. Hurricane intensity and frequency is not increasing. Tornado intensity and frequency is not increasing. There has been no significant increase in floods or droughts over time.
Where are all the climate refugees? We see war refugees, we see political refugees, but we do not see climate refugees. There is no place on earth that has previously been habitable that is no longer so due to a change in the global climate, nor are there any places that are pushing the envelope. Even in the most dramatic areas of increasing temperature, it is a tiny fraction of a degree different over a hundred years, and usually that record is suspect by the nature of temperature measurement changes over that century or more.
I would like to know where you are finding the data that has convinced you that the climate is a problem.
Hi Sarah, thanks for your long and detailed set of questions! I’m about to turn in for the evening and will be busy in the morning but will work on pulling together information for you tomorrow afternoon.
As you will see, I made the same points in my comments on Holly’s Comment of the Day. She’s too smart to use those climate change talking points. I too would love to know why she did.
Okay here’s my longer answer: Your comments are in ital, my responses are not.
I am sorry to only poke at a single point here on the discussion, but there is too much here to talk about in a single comment, and well, I love discussing climate.
Yay! Happy to engage here. Caveat: I am not a climate scientist. However, I AM trained as a scientist and have some general skills in finding and evaluating scientific literature outside my area. I cannot evaluate details of measurement in particular areas – so I rely on the peer review system to catch errors that will be obvious to those trained in the field.
Why do you claim that we are in a less stable climate? Where are climate refugees?
Even in the most dramatic areas of increasing temperature, it is a tiny fraction of a degree different over a hundred years, and usually that record is suspect by the nature of temperature measurement changes over that century or more.
One of the indicators of stable climate is relatively small and consistent average temperature. Apparently global mean temperature has varied by no more than 0.65 degrees over the past 9,500 years (yeah, tiny right?). The stability of temperature (which is both a climate measure and a driver of the severity of weather phenomena affected by temperature such as hurricanes) has shifted to rising temperature (global warming). See diagram below (sources in caption).
From the data available to me, the rise of the sea level is practically insignificant. 3.9 inches over 100 years is not very much, and some of that measurement is debatable.
According to NOAA, 2.6 of that rise occurred during the 21-year period between 1993 and 2014. Measurement:
“Sea level is primarily measured using tide stations and satellite laser altimeters. Tide stations around the globe tell us what is happening at a local level—the height of the water as measured along the coast relative to a specific point on land. Satellite measurements provide us with the average height of the entire ocean. Taken together, these tools tell us how our ocean sea levels are changing over time.”
I also want to point out that intuition “3.9 doesn’t seem very large” is not the best guide when attempting to understand the dynamics of a complex system, in which what SEEM intuitively like small changes can have big effects. So, for example, when storms have more water in them (because of warmer bodies of water that fuel them) also slow down, they dump a lot more rain in one place. The ensuing flood based on perhaps 10 inches of rain can see water levels rise by 20 feet because of geography. So an average of 10 inches becomes 20 feet…. Much bigger problem for those in vulnerable spots.
Q: What are the measurement issues you see for the 3.9 inch data you are referencing?
Most coastal towns are seeing no important change to their way of life with the changing sea level. Where are you seeing people who are being impacted by this linear and very small rise?
To date, the islands that have disappeared or have lost substantial (over half) of their territory are primarily in the Pacific and off the coast of India,for example, among the islands of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, and off India Lohachara and Supdanga are examples (apparently there are 40 islands that fit this category. Among coastal towns, New Zealand has quite a few that have been abandoned or substantially depopulated as people retreat from the rising seas. The largest of these seems to be West Aukland, with the number of people affected over 300K.
You might also look at the example of the Marshall Islands, where they are concerned that their country (which consists of low-lying islands) is in danger of becoming completely depopulated.
For the US, see Holland Island and Tangier Island and Isle de Jean Charles, the South Carolina shoreline generally, Sea Breeze, NJ, and areas of Alaska. Although sea level rise numbers are averages, this varies quite a bit across the globe – some areas are seeing well above average, some almost nothing. Per NOAA:
“Global sea level trends and relative sea level trends are different measurements. Just as the surface of the Earth is not flat, the surface of the ocean is also not flat—in other words, the sea surface is not changing at the same rate globally. Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average due to many local factors: subsidence, upstream flood control, erosion, regional ocean currents, variations in land height, and whether the land is still rebounding from the compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers.”
As they point out, sea level rise can also combine with other factors: Apparently for Holland Island there is also some subsidence involved. None of these have a lot of people.
Instead, I see first world countries increasing their coastal presence significantly, where they would be overcome by rising sea levels, if they were doing so worryingly. Third world countries, by and large, are also not having issues with rising water in their coastal villages.
First world — People have always liked to settle close to water. Coastal cities like Boston are taking some measures that will help them adapt, and that will be an option for many cities and countries that have adequate resources (the Thames Barrier in England and the truly gargantuan engineering of the Delta Works in the Netherlands being some examples). Miami is another city to watch as it now floods regularly during storm surges. They have a $2.7B plan to help protect the city from associated damage. Presumably no one would be willing to spend that kind of money for an imaginary threat!
Not so rich countries: See Bangladesh, India, West Coast of Africa. In Africa coastal communities in Ghana have been particularly hard hit due to similar dynamics as what the South Carolina coast is experiencing: stronger tidal surges have accelerated coastal erosion, so the land is disappearing out from under settlements. Here’s an article that pays a fair amount of attention to Africa
Cooley, S., D. Schoeman, L. Bopp, P. Boyd, S. Donner, D.Y. Ghebrehiwet, S.-I. Ito, W. Kiessling, P. Martinetto, E. Ojea, M.-F. Racault, B. Rost, and M. Skern-Mauritzen, 2022: Oceans and Coastal Ecosystems and Their Services. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 379–550, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.005.
I am also wondering where you are getting data that suggests that people are being negatively impacted by the climate. We are seeing that climate disasters, from both an economic and human lives standpoint, are having a diminishing cost overall. Sure, they get a lot of publicity, and maybe they cover more area, but the cost of repairs is growing smaller unless the fire is drastically mismanaged (see LA).
Natural disasters do happen, but generally, the loss of human life is decreasing. Hurricane intensity and frequency is not increasing. Tornado intensity and frequency is not increasing. There has been no significant increase in floods or droughts over time.
Better warning systems and weather tracking has definitely reduced loss of life in many cases, but re the intensity and frequency of natural disasters, the insurance industry disagrees with you. I also live in fire country (Oregon) and it seems to be clear that the prevalence of severe fires is getting worse, attributable to the increasingly drier and hotter summer climate. Re “mismanaging” a fire, when you have extremely high temperatures and gale force winds, not much “management” is possible. Instead the focus is (and should be!) on getting people to evacuate as fast as possible to minimize loss of life (which was achieved in the LA fire). We also had a miraculously successful evacuation in our 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, which was driven by very high winds and burned everything in its path to cinders. No one died! This was largely due to the quick action of the fire chief where the blaze started, who understood there was no chance of containing the fire given the wind situation and immediately focused on urgent and immediate evacuation of all in its path. The people of Paradise CA were not so lucky.
Returning to your statement “There has been no significant increase“ the word “significant” has a different meaning in ordinary language and in statistics. Without knowing your source or what time period you are thinking of re “over time” I can’t evaluate the basis of the individual claim here. I do know that there are challenges in establishing statistical significance when studying relatively rare events, because the law of large numbers doesn’t apply. This is exacerbated when limiting oneself to one type of natural disaster at a time, which is actually typical in the historical literature, according to a recent literature review by Sargiacomo et al. (2021). So the data is thin. We can see the trends, AND the data is noisy and sparse.
Sargiacomo, M., Servalli, S., Potito, S., D’Andreamatteo, A., & Gitto, A. (2021). Accounting for natural disasters from a historical perspective: A literature review and research agenda. Accounting History, 26(2), 179-204. https://doi.org/10.1177/10323732211003173 (Original work published 2021)
However, when collapsing across natural disasters there is more to work with, and for this a good source, especially for the past several decades, is the insurance industry, which relies heavily on statistical analysis and forecasting and also offers a precise measurement of cost re size of payouts. Now, these payouts are affected by inflation (especially inflation in the cost of homes and cars) but the insurance industry does seem to be reporting that the incidence and severity of costly natural disasters has increased in recent history.
Some sources: NAIC (some kind of national insurance association) and Simon-Kucher.com
Some insurance companies have decided to stop offering some types of coverage in some areas because they see it as too financially risky. In contrast to “cheap talk” I think we can assume that this is an “honest signal” — these are business decisions based on profit motive and actual information about the historical trends of insurance claims.
“Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (bolds mine)
Some might consider citing the UNIPCC as counterproductive, I’m one of them; to wit:
Dr. Richard Lindzen, UN IPCC lead author and reviewer resigns abruptly:
“Controlling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.” –
2005: Dr. Christopher Landsea resigns abruptly, withdraws from participation in the UNIPCC AR4,
”(it uses) a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.” Landsea claimed the IPCC had become politicized and the leadership ignored his concerns.
2011: UNIPCC Lead Author Ken Caldiera resigns abruptly. “it is not clear how much additional benefit there is to having a huge bureaucratic scientific review effort under UN auspices...”
2014: Dr. Richard Tol (UNIPCC AR5 Working Group II) resigns abruptly from the writing team for the SPM/AR5– September 2013, disagreeing with the profile of the report which he considered too alarmist and putting too little emphasis on opportunities to adapt to climate changes
“The Panel is directed from within the environment lobby and not from within the science.”
Sensing a damning trend, here?
There’s more: Drs. David Legates, Timothy Ball, Will Happer, Murray Salby, Judith Curry, Joanne Nova, David Whitmore, James Annan, Hans Von Storch, Susan Crockford, Bob Carter, Garth Paltridge, Willy Soon, Peter Ridd, William Gray, Nils-Axel Mörner, Freeman Dyson, Bjorn Lomborg, Myron Ebell, Kiminori Itoh, Ivar Giaever, Ian Plimer, etc., all have something in common.
Their skepticism (Skepticism Is The Highest Of Duties; Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin-T. Huxley) has been brutally, an unscientifically, savaged.
In his comically inept schlockumentary slide-show An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, Jr. breathlessly predicted a future ~ 20’/~6 meter SL rise.
Funniest thing; right around that time, he purchased a SF Bay Area condo which (and this is where it gets GOOD!) sits a mere 10’/~3 meters above SL.
In the immortal words of Delbert McClinton: If You Can’t Lie No Better Than That, You Might As Well Tell The Truth
PWS
Thanks for that. It’s a good reminder that on a topic so thoroughly politicized (on multiple fronts) it’s best to focus on the primary literature to shift through and evaluate the quality of evidence and theory. Harder to wade through, for sure, when it is outside one’s domain of training, but a lot more trustworthy (and yes, of course, with the caveats that peer review is human hence fallible, science is always a work in progress, and none of us can know the future with high confidence beyond expecting the sun to rise as usual, gravity to continue operating, and humans to continue to exhibit human behavior in all its fascinating and sometimes distressing variety!).
Righbackatcha, Holly!
I hope you have time to read the I’m one of them link, which chronicles even more of the…er…”human behavior in all its fascinating and sometimes distressing variet(ies)” which one encounters in the ongoing Climate Change arena.
PWS
Thanks for the link. Are there any institutions left that aren’t thoroughly corrupted? (BTW this is a rhetorical question — I know they do exist–this is my emotional reaction of disgust). yes the temptation of self-dealing is a normal and widespread human frailty, which CAN be countered somewhat with COI checks, transparency requirements, and other checks and balances, but if people are completely lacking in ethical impulses of the positive kind it’s hard to protect institutions that control meaningful money from falling into this kind of ditch.
Although I don’t think it will lead to a better solution I do kind of understand the nihilism that one encounters in some of the younger generation.
Responding to Holly A (above): “Are there any institutions left that aren’t thoroughly corrupted?”
Perhaps not, however there are researchers who aren’t. Deserving of mention would be those who conducted the 2011 OPERA Experiment, which showed CERN scientists observing neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.
This lightning-in-a-shotglass discovery would have called into question Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity,” turned science-as-we-know-it on its head, and guaranteed these researchers a place on science’s Mount Rushmore.
To their credit, AND with a nod to research ethics, the FIRST THING they did was consistent with THE most basic aspect of scientific inquiry; make their findings (methodologies, data sets, etc.) available for independent testing/scrutiny to be either reproduced or falsified; the latter prevailed.
Think you’d ever see anything remotely similar by Briffa, Jones, Trenberth, Hansen…Mann?
Me either.
Speaking of Einstein: No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
PWS
Hmm, the diagram (a screenshot) didn’t go through. See Figure 3 here: https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/more-evidence-for-extreme-climate-stability
I struggle to find that this is much evidence for us moving to climate instability. The article begins with the claim that over millenia, we saw jumps of up to 22F, and that this would make agriculture unsustainable. First, 22F over several millenia is still a wide range of time. Second, we are no longer hunter/gatherers, and have the ability to maintain agriculture through greenhouses and all sorts of climate manipulation in factory settings.
In addition, we see that the idea that we have not been moving around much as a global mean temperature, is still measured on a geologic scale, and our current system of measurement is on a very tiny band in that geologic scale. Considering the granularity, or lack their of, for measurements on this scale, the idea that we have climate instability is incredibly suspect. When you move from very wide data points to close ones, you will see these kinds of jumps in ANY system. The granularity of data can actually lead to a great deal of false ideas.
This is a problem in process control that is well known and understood. When you take a system that has been getting data at a rate of once every 5 seconds and increase it to a system of once every 5 ms, suddenly your calm process becomes very chaotic. When I was working as an engineer at a refinery, we upgraded data management for our distributed control system. We went from having data a few times a minute to multiple times a second, as fast as fiber could carry. Immediately, the units started to struggle and we, the engineers, fought to get our systems under control. However, speaking with the data experts, the very first thing that they had us do, was drop the data granularity. At this level, most measurements are considered noise in the system. They are not helpful, or even useful data and must be disregarded. That is precisely what can be seen here.
Remember that these geologic and ice measurements are very wide range, as compared to the measurements we have today. This leads to a great deal of curve smoothing, which removes highs and lows. We have seen many changes in global temperatures over the last 2000 years that would be more than a few tenths of a degree. Consider the time of the plague of Justinian, both before and after the massive volcanic eruptions at the time. Then look at the 1600s and 1700s. There are plenty of other events in this time frame that would have great global temperature variances. These would have wide ranging temperatures well outside this paper’s assumed range of temperatures in the “stable” region, with several degrees Celcius variation between them.
In addition, the article discusses using several different techniques, include newly developed ones, to get the information they want. This leads to drastic differences on the information measured and how it can be interpreted, which leads to a great deal of skepticism about the conclusions.
Given the track record of “newly developed” techniques for climate modeling, it is far too soon to get excited by another set of data until it is reasonably corroborated.
There is no evidence on this graph or paper that would cause me to doubt that the climate is still quite stable, but I certainly doubt that this author understands data management on long scales.
Hmm, that’s a really interesting point re mismatches in data granularity. Presumably a good check on that would be to compare apples to apples — Greenland ice cores for the past two post-Industrial Revolution century to the data for the previous several thousand years, using the same method and granularity. Of course if the interval of measurement is something like 100 years it would be hard to detect any kind of signal….
And, of course ,I agree with you that skepticsm is always warranted, about claims of both change and continuity.
One of the most interesting things I learned about when dipping into the literature on the past 10K or so years of climate stability was that this was apparently kicked off by the Younger Dryas event, which interrupted the usual glacial cycle. A good reminder that even when there are patterns covering millions of years, new developments are always possible.
Hence any confident claims about the future are (and should be) suspect if not properly hedged (past performance no guarantee etc.). However, this is scientific practice, and not necessarily as common in science journalism, even less so in the popular press, which is rewarded for sensationalism…
Here’s another summary of some interesting findings re climate stabilization I just stumbled on: https://news.mit.edu/2022/earth-stabilizing-temperature-1116
Jack wrote, “Conservatives aren’t doing this; Republicans aren’t doing this. Only the Left, and it is signature significance. An ethical political party doesn’t tolerate such tactics. Civically literate Americans don’t either. The American Left is sick…soul sick, emotionally ill, mentally damaged. It no longer believes in democracy, and is reveling in its own rejection of America’s founding principles.”
Outstandingly accurate perspective!
President Trump and Republicans didn’t create the trendy things that are actually destroying our society, our culture, and our country. They didn’t create the radicalized left’s hate, bigotry, irrational aversion to truth and facts, anti-American and anti-Constitution ideological leanings, leaning towards totalitarianism, bastardization of words and symbols, anti-history stance, anti-social behaviors, anti-respect, anti-logic, anti-critical thinking, anti-civility, pro-anarchy, or the left’s Pravda like propaganda media machine, etc, etc. All these things are a direct result of the political left’s core ideological beliefs being pushed to the brink of pure Orwellian styled totalitarianism.
It seems to me that everything that the political left does and says is done to slowly undermine the government of the United States of America, completely demonize anyone that opposes them, and engage in pure fear mongering to terrorize weak minded easily manipulated morons. This is not mindlessness, they are doing all this for a reason. Their sheeple’ish foot soldiers have been brainwashed to believe anything they tell them and are ready to go. This is the only way the totalitarian tyrants can strip the Constitution from existence (short of civil war that they know they will loose) and instill their delusional “utopian” society that they believe will give everyone “equity” in all things.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama literally called leftist activists to action in 2008 when he said…
We are seeing is the results of that activists call to action.
These brainwashed morons in the political left will likely do anything to achieve their delusional utopia and they know full well that Constitution loving law abiding people will do whatever they can to follow the Constitution and existing laws. Unfortunately, strictly following the Constitution and existing laws might be the downfall of the Constitution. Don’t ever forget this quote…
I don’t condone that; however, there really is a limit that a civil society can be pushed before it does that exact thing to cleanse their society of that which is trying to undermine and destroy it.
The solution is simple, if somewhat unpalatable to conservatives – hit back. Stop being a martyr by turning the other cheek. Stop taking the moral high ground. Give like for like and be done with it. Is it crass? Yes. Do two wrong make a right? No. But who the hell cares? Oh, and keep all the receipts.
I have a legal question here: can a restaurant refuse to serve a customer simply because they do not like that customer? Turley indicates in his post that Dershowitz may have reasons to sue, but does not give much detail.
In the past any establishment could appeal to the “freedom of association” clause in the constitution to remove anybody from their premises they did not like. As this right was abused during the Jim Crow era to discriminate based on race, legislation like the Civil Rights act were passed to end this practice.
My first question is whether Dershowitz have a case against this business based on the Civil Rights act, or any other act?
My second question is whether the the “freedom of association” clause in the constitution still has meaning today. It appears to me that freedom to associate implies that you also have the freedom not to associate.
As for the ethics side of the issues I have to say that nothing surprises me anymore. Pointing out that woke liberals behave unethically is like pointing out that water is wet. However, unethical behavior is not necessarily against the law, hence my questions?
CVB I believe the answer to you legal question is incorporated in public accommodations requirements. It is unlawful to refuse service based on immutable characteristics. I suggest that one can argue that legal representation of bad people is immutable because our Constitution provides that all persons are entitled to legal representation. Thus, attorney’s who take cases that require they defend what some consider a pariah are merely giving the accused his or her Constitutional protections and failing to do so would undermine the Constitution.
As for freedom of association that will apply to social association. The clerk in JC Penney cannot say to a customer they will not wait on them because she knows they have an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on their car and she does not want to associate with them; nor can the store manager. A business license grants the proprietor the right to conduct business within the framework of existing local ordinances and other laws. It does allow them the right to bar patrons who have created problems in the store but that is the extent of that right.
With that said, a proprietor can say they will not create a particular product if it violates their sensibilities or infringes on their protected free expression. This is why Wal-Mart won’t decorate a cake that say’s Happy Birthday Nigga or the Colorado baker wont create a cake specifically decorated to celebrate a gay wedding. In both cases, the proprietor chooses not to provide a specific custom product for the mentioned reasons but will not stop the customer from buying any other non-custom product.
I am not a lawyer but that is how I understand the laws.
one cannot ask why to an icoherant group and expect a coherant response. The leftno self reflection in thier words or actions. When I point out toa Trump deranged friend that what he proposes to do or say to defend democracy from fascism is in fact fascistuc behavior, his resposne is that he ahs trodo what he does for the sake of the massed who do not understnad.
The Trump deranged are delusional.
My oft stated thesis: The left has destroyed organized religion. Nature abhors a vacuum. Politics have filled the void created by the destruction of organized religion. If you “practice” the wrong politics/religion, you are sinning against God and must be condemned to hell. It’s a modern-day Inquisition. Non-lefties are heretics and must be burned at the stake.
Think of all the wars fought over theological disputes. That’s analogous to what’s going on right now.
The Dutch call the Reformation “the Correction.” That’s what the left is engaged in right now: correcting the wrongs of anyone who disagrees with them.
Because the left listens to idiots like John Pavlovitz for guidance, who are nothing more than hate spewers who declare their own virtue. They are down to nothing more than name calling, so that’s all they do.