Comments step back has made

Resonant Writer

Say what you will. The Mustache knows how to write. Knows how to resonate with readers of the Mother Ship: The New York Times.

So if the Mustache starts pumping up the patriotic pulse with his new tag line: Green is the new Red White & Blue, we should follow his cue and embrace it. Never mind all his other politcal follies. The Mustache has been to Peru. He has seen the receding glaciers as clearly as some of us see our receding hairlines. He gets it. So don't knock the Resonant Writer at the NYT when he comes bearing gifts. Accept them with open arms and say, "Thank You Mr. Friedman."On Good framing from Friedman posted 2 years, 7 months ago 27 Responses

Shown & Blown (Like Hot Air)

It's also been "shown" that evolution ain't real and that the Lord Almighty created the Universe in 6 days, whereafter He Who Hath Infinite power got "tired" and had to "rest".

The trouble with people like you is that you don't understand Malthus was right, just the timing was a bit off.On A reintroduction posted 2 years, 7 months ago 22 Responses

Good Talkings -- But Patently Corrupt Walkings

Many of the politicians who greedly froth with green saliva from their vote chasing mouths are the same ones who are crushing Yankee ingenuity by destroying (Deforming) the American patent system.

The myth is that only the Goliaths of Corpocratic America are capable of inventing our way out of the carbon combusting mess they got us into in the first place.

The truth is that most of the truly innovative inventions come from individuals and small start ups. The Goliaths are running scared and are seeking to crush the upstarts. One way to do that is to kill the golden goose that begat American technological supremacy, the traditional American patent system. They are at it even as we speak, breaking the system apart piece by piece..

The Goliaths shroud themselves under spin names like "Coalition" for Patent "Fairness". Their intent is to be anything but "fair". As the witches of Macbeth warned us: Fair is foul and Balanced is a spin meister's inversion of the truth. Beware the Ides of April Deform. Write to your Congressperson to protect the individual innovators of America. Don't look away as they get crushed by the K Street Goliaths.

Who do you trust to come up with the innovations that will reverse our Corpocratic Way of Warming the Globe, David or Goliath? Solar energy or E85 Cornahol?On A reintroduction posted 2 years, 7 months ago 22 Responses

Education will save us = BS #42

1. The Market will save us.
   
2. Technology will save us.
   
3. A Higher Power will save us.
   

All this talk about "educating" the public into becoming more scientifically minded is just a continuation of the Nancy Drew Salvation Series. We are constantly looking for that one saving grace, the one quick fix that will turn this crazy world around. So we create these series of fictions.

"Education will save us" is just another silly hope in a long list of fantasy-based realities. What we forget is that the public has been "educated", over their entire life spans, to become the scientifically illiterate mob they are now. What makes you think you can "re-educate" them at this late state in the game?

Early in their schooling, the "average layperson" was taught that all pigs are equal except that some pigs are more equal than themselves, especailly in understanding the hard hard math stuff and the complicated science stuff. But that's OK because this big world has room for all kinds and a safe space for even the most math-challenged of us. To each according to his abilities and to all according to their consumerist "needs". The magic invisible appendage of the market place will take care of everything and will magically make it all good.

As John Kerry recently said when debating the Grinch-wit: "We need to unleash the genius of the marketplace" [... and it will solve this global warming thing.]

If a smart guy like Kerry doesn't have a clue, what hope do you have to "educate" the public?

Forget education. It's too late. Work on your rhetoric skills. K Street does.On They've got it, they shouldn't be ashamed of using it posted 2 years, 7 months ago 15 Responses

Global Problem= Internal Problem

My Gristy Mantra, if you want to call it as such is this:

The problem on the inside becomes the problem on the outside.

By this I mean that our hodge podge human brain, as unintelligently assembled by random evolution, is the source of most of our global problems.

Example 1: Our internal tick tocks are optimized for maximizing reproduction. By all acounts, we have succeeded eponentially well in this endeavor. 6 Billion going on 9 Billion. Good show people!

Example 2: Our grey matter calculater is configured by evolutionary pressures to engage in irrational denialism of the cornucopian kind. Consider how many people working on Wall Street clearly know how to "crunch the numbers"; and yet most insist Malthus was wrong!

The problem on the inside becomes the problem on the outside.On A big picture statement the world's big problems posted 2 years, 7 months ago 6 Responses

Administrative Agency Law

I have not had a chance to read it all, especially the dissents.

This case comes in under a rather esoteric area of law known as "Administrative Agency Law". The EPA is one of those 4th branches of government known as an administrative agency.

AA's cannot do whatever they want. They cannot engage in arbitrary and capricious decision making. See 5 USC 706.

So one of the questions was, how much discretion does the EPA adminstrator have in making one of "his judgments"? The conservatives were arguing that it is near total discretion. The liberals said no, it had to more "reasonable" than that; and given that essentially all the scientists in the world are in agreement on GW, "reasonable" does not include an excuse like, I didn't regulate CO2 because I didn't feel like it; or I didn't regulate because I saw that commercial with the little girl blowing CO2 into a shedding dandelion and I was convinced that it's all good, all natural.On This is a game changer posted 2 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses

Environmentalism is Free Mkt Capitalism?

"Free" markets is a euphamism for "Anarchistic" market exploitation. A "free" market advocate believes that a capitalist is entitled to do whatever he wants in order to attain personal profit.

This is why the threat of government regulation of CO2 output scares them. It's a different world now. With 6.5 Billion of us all planning to pump CO2 galore into the atmosphere with our non-negotiable and ever more Western style of living (SUV's, incandecent electric lights everywhere, etc.), the government has to step in and attach a regulator valve to each of us. It ain't going to happen voluntarily.On 'Supporting global warming initiatives is tantamount to endorsing communism and the one world order' posted 2 years, 8 months ago 27 Responses

No Shame

That attitude probably started when the first Europeans landed on the American continents and realized their weaponry was superior. So they could take freely of whatever they saw.

America was a wide open frontier in the early days and the idea of "freedom", of "don't tread on me" quickly flourished.

What Gore is threatening to do is to tread on Inhofe and his constituents. Their negative reaction to this is understandable if you look at it from the viewpoint of an early Colonialist who wanted no govenrment intrusions on his "freedoms".On Really the last one, honest posted 2 years, 8 months ago 10 Responses

P.S. Inhofe and FREEDOM

Funny thing about writing.
Sometimes you amaze even yourself with what you wrote.

The more I think about the noble image of Inhofe standing there with the American flag waving over his head, with his horns down raging and charging against the Commie Red Gore, the more it makes sense.

"Freedom" means never having to say sorry to anybody about what you choose to do with your own private "property". So if I've got an SUV and I want to burn 80 gallons of gasoline driving my baby around in the Montanna back country, by gollee I'm going to do it and no Pinko Greenie Commie like Gore is going to tell me otherwise.

That's the mindset. And once you adopt it, everything Inhofe does and says kind of makes sense. Try standing in a Freedom Lover's shoes.On Really the last one, honest posted 2 years, 8 months ago 10 Responses

Lou Ginzo's Inhofe Scale

Hi Lou.
Long time no see you on the TOD circuits.

You forgot to mention the outright CONTRADICTION in Inhofe's rant.

1. First he said there is NO Global Warming because Buffalo had the coldest winter ever ("where's GW when you need it?")

2. Then he said there IS Global Warming but it falls under The Other Dude Done-it Defense (in other words, we humans aren't the cause of GW, it's the Sun's fault, look at the melting caps on Jupiter and Mars --Hey it's the Dawning of the Age of AmNot2Curious-- no wonder I no longer have my long beautiful "Hair" [that's a play from the 1960's for you young'ins out there, Dawn of the Age of Aquarius was one of the hit songs, chuckle, chuckle])

It should be a hoot

Here's my 2 cents before the fire works start.

Most politicians are lawyers.
In the law business there is an unspoken Grand Unification Model.
It goes like this:
Every "debate" contains the following basic elements:

1. The human decision maker(s) {Jury or judge},
   
2. The advocate for the proposition, and
   
3. The advocate against the proposition (aka the other lawyer).

Politicians demand that every "debate" follow this format. (They can't see it happening in any other way.)

Of course, in science the whole idea of a debate being 100% over and any scientific model being declared as the 100% correct and unquestionable one is preposterous.

Hence, politicians and scientists constantly talk past one one another. They never truly communicate under a common model of how the "debate" Universe works.On Political wonks everywhere feel the electricity! posted 2 years, 8 months ago 2 Responses

The Little Miss Sunshine Defense

This all sounds like the Little Miss Sunshine Defense by the deniar community.

Their fallback position: OK so GW is real. But who cares? What really matters is that the world is divided into two kinds of people, winners and losers. (And we are always in the winner's circle.)On New articles take a look posted 2 years, 8 months ago 3 Responses

Skepticism, Science and Political Debate

Somewhere in Monday's hearings, one of the politicians challenged Dr. Hansen to proclaim that "the scientific debate over climate change is over".

Of course, Hansen smartly refused to do so. On the other hand he did not retort in the way he should have. He did not explain why the language of politicians is incompatible with the language of science.

If Hansen were not so intimidated at the threat of losing his job, he might have said:

"Look you're a politician and I'm a scientist. We live into two entirely different worlds. Politicians can make absolutist proclamations like, 'I did not have sex with that woman' or 'They are in the last throes of their insurgency'. We scientists do not have that luxury. The very essence of science is that everything is always open to debate, even the laws of gravity. The minute someone presents repeatable evidence that a scientific theory is wrong, we must revisit and revise it. That is what makes science science. It is a set of continuously challengeable models about how the Universe works. The debate is never absolutely over about anything. Sometimes it is 99% over, but never 100%. In light of that, your request that I proclaim a "100% completion" to the debate over climate change or to the debate over the climate models makes no sense in the realm of science. It's like asking me to explain to you how flat the flat Earth truly is or to confess to you about when I stopped beating my wife. In light of that, I must respectfully decline your invitation to proclaim the debate to be 101% finished."On Tedious posted 2 years, 8 months ago 11 Responses