Environment

Rep. Omar’s Dumb Tweet (Continued…)

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I was so tempted to headline this post with the res ipsa loquitur tag, but didn’t at the last minute. The reason: I was convinced that as obvious as the scientific and logical nonsense her tweet represented should be, a lot of usually intelligent people wouldn’t allow themselves to see it, because, as Ethics Alarms notes repeatedly, “bias makes you stupid.” The post’s comments turned out to be a marvelous example of that.

One persistent defender of Omar insisted that it was crucial that I had checked the alleged authority for her gaffe before criticizing her. It happens that I did, but I didn’t need to. Nobody did: that’s the whole point. If the woman had the requisite number of brain cells to rub together to start a bonfire, she would have known what emerged from her keyboard when she typed that was hilariously silly with the application of basic critical thinking skills.

Recently, Major League Baseball teams broke the record for the most runs scored in all games on a single day. It was remarkable, because the record was more than a century old: the day occurred in the 19th century. All of the articles about this event specified the day. If, as Omar’s ignorant tweet claimed, the Earth had broken its previous record for “hottest day in 120,000 years,” there would be a day from 120,000 years ago that held the broken record. No source mentioned such a day, however, because there are no daily records of the Earth’s weather—daily temperature is weather, not climate—from 120,000 years ago or even a thousand years ago (though we know Pompeii got pretty damn hot when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.) Estimates of global climate in the periods before records were kept depend on “proxy data.” Here is a chart explaining what proxy data can tell scientist about distant climates:

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The State of Certainty And Reliability of Climate Change Forecasts And Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Since some EA commenters have chosen to send their credibility to die on the metaphorical hill of Rep. Omar’s ridiculous climate change tweet of last week, I felt this paired set of reports made an important point. Amazingly, so far at least, these irreconcilable contradictions—and this is far from the only one in the climate change “settled science” debate—- don’t seem to shake the faith of climate change fanatics even a little bit.

Which itself is useful information….

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (Well, One Of Them) And Unethical Tweet Of The Month: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Observations:

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Unethical Quote Of The Week And Worst Apology Of The Month: Doug Dechert

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

New York gossip columnist Doug Dechert (above right), during the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.presidential campaign event for the press that he was hosting, became enraged during a contentious exchange regarding climate change and shouted,

“I’m farting!”

as he did, in fact, fart loudly for the assembled. That’s The Ethics Alarms Unethical Quote of the Week, ironically, because it was completely honest and factual. Later, he provided the Ethics Alarms Worst Apology of the Month, and maybe the year, by telling the New York Post, “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

This is also ironic, because it is a straightforward and seemingly sincere apology without qualifications, and yet is still terrible, indeed uniquely terrible, because it doesn’t even fit on the Apology Scale.

I suppose the closest would be #9: “Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”). Another variation: apologizing for a tangential matter other than the act or words that warranted an apology.” But the wording is deliberately humorous, raising the suspicion that Doug Dechert isn’t sorry at all, and doesn’t care if everyone knows he isn’t sorry. Moreover, intentionally farting at a public event you organized for a presidential candidate and announcing it, thus turning the event into a fiasco that can only embarrass the individual it was supposed to benefit, is one of those things that can’t be apologized for, like setting someone’s cat on fire.

Come to think of it, Dechert also should be in the running for the Ethics Alarms’ Asshole of the Year title. For more reasons than one.

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The Des Moines Climate Change Propagandist Weatherman Is Quitting. He Should Have Been Fired.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Poor KCCI-TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger is quitting because viewer criticism of his slots hyping climate change propaganda while he was supposed to be giving local weather reports became too unbearable. Well good, except that he should have been fired first.

“I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,” he said in his interview with The Associated Press.

Except that’s not his job. He is a meteorologist, not a climate scientist, and isn’t qualified to “connect” the dots. Weather isn’t climate, and while climate change activists find ways to connect virtually any kind of weather to the climate change doom watch, that is not what people tune into weather reports to hear. For me, it’s in the same category as NFL players using games to protest social policy.

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: “George The Atheist”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“I’m not doing this. Enough is enough. Leave me alone. Period. I’m not doing this. Fine me if you want. I don’t care. Catch the car thieves and check-washers first.”

—-New York Times commenter “George the Atheist” responding to an article about New York City’s new mandatory food waste composting law.

God bless George. This is classic American civil disobedience, and nothing demands it more than useless and futile anti-climate change virtue signalling burdening citizens who have real problems to worry about. Big Brother thinks it is entitled to just keep piling more and more obligations, expenses duties, routines and annoyances on citizens, and will keep doing so, ratcheting up the basic burdens and expense of daily life in the process, until sufficient numbers of people stand their ground, say “No,” and reverse this toxic trend.

Sadly, there aren’t enough Georges in Democratic-run cities and states, not nearly enough. This is why one has to avoid piles of human fecal matter in San Francisco, and watch shop-lifers operate without fear in most major cities, and why so many woke school boards continue to program ideological indoctrination in the public schools. It’s also why I still see young people, not just elders who might (but probably don’t) have a valid reason other than being fearful Democrats, wearing masks while riding bicycles, jogging alone and driving solo in their own car. Most people—even most Americans, who live in an embedded (but weakening) culture that emphasizes suspicion of authority and reverence for personal liberty—are inclined to just knuckle under to the abuse of power, because they lack the integrity, courage and certitude to say “No.” They are weenies. Those who wield power rely on them.

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Pointer: Althouse

 

 

Ethics Quote Of The Month: John W. Jenkins

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“The University defends the truth,” says the Harvard logo. ‘The emblem shows respect for science, using only verified facts within the University’s walls and a willingness to defend the truth.’ Yet as it relates to climate change, the University has set aside obvious truths and brought together its five professional schools supporting the new “Save the Planet” religious dogma of the past decade.”

—Harvard M.B.A John W. Jenkins, in a letter to the alumni magazine protesting the University’s complicity in promoting “imprudent policies perpetuated on our populations by Green environmental activists whose view of history is only 20 years deep.”

Jenkins, whom I have thus far not succeeded in contacting, has authored one of the clearest and most persuasive debunking of current climatic change cant, and perfectly chastised our mutual alma mater, Harvard, for its cowardly and irresponsible alliance with an unethical and destructive movement. The author appears to be in his late eighties, and more skilled in communication than graduates half, indeed a quarter his age.

Harvard Magazine published his letter, but I am trying hard to believe it was a coincidence that its second half was difficult to locate due to a pagination error. I hope Mr. Jenkins does not mind Ethics Alarms re-publishing his entire statement. It deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. The whole thing is an Ethics Quote of the Month. Here it is:

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Hallelujah! Sen.Kennedy Puts On The Record The Irrefutable Evidence That Democratic Climate Change Policies Are Incompetent, Dishonest, And Irresponsible…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) questioned Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk today before the Senate committee on appropriations to discuss the 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy.

The following remarkable exchange ensued during the testimony, and it should be used to confront every climate change activist, believer, hysteric and expert, constantly and repeatedly, until they are forced to admit the truth:

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Welcome To “Bad Research Theater”!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Yes, it’s Alistair Cookie, here for another episode—two, in fact!—of that long-running exhibition loved by the confirmation bias-infected and the unscrupulous alike, “Bad Research Theater”!

Episode I : “The Steam Engines of Galapagos“

The eye-opening scholarly paper “The end of the line: competitive exclusion and the extinction of historical entities” has been published the journal, “Royal Society Open Science.” Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, uses the history of railroad steam engines history to argue against the merits of “competitive exclusion,” the respected paleontology evolution principle that species can drive other species to extinction through competition.

Working with former KU postdoctoral researcher Luke Strotz, now of Northwest University in Xi’an, China, Lieberman found that the fossil record lacks the detailed data verifying competitive exclusion found in the history of steam engines. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced!

Many years ago, as a boy trying to bring in distant baseball broadcasts at night on my transister radio, I stumbled across a rural evangelist who was ranting about the godlessness of evolution. “Evolution says that if you put a six cylinder engine in your garage and let it sit there for a million years or so, when you come back and check on it, it will have become an eight cylinder engine!” he said, chuckling heartily. I thought that was the dumbest thing I had heard to that point in my life, and it still is in the top five. Little did I suspect that his idea of comparing mechanical objects with live organisms would be adopted decades later by actual scientists.

Episode II : Anything to Throw Them Off the Track

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How Jolly! The White House Has Figured Out That Virtue-Signaling Policies With No Tangible Benefits But Substantial Negative Consequences Are Not In The Nation’s Best Interests…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating news item!

RealClear Energy informs us…

…the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following his inauguration….Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion….Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and instead focused his efforts on costly “green energy” goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were promptly laid off…

Now, everyone except hard-core climate change fanatics—and maybe poor Joe— knew that closing down the pipeline would have no salutary effects on global warming or conservation. The Obama administration had essentially admitted that shutting it down would be largely symbolic but otherwise pointless (like all climate change grandstanding). Never mind: the pipeline was killed anyway just as Biden had promised to do on “Day One” during the 2020 campaign.  If they could have voted, the 16-year-olds would have gone for Biden. Continue reading →