Glenn Beck:

Of the Indigent New Orleanians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, “I didn’t think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims.”

“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody..No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.”

“I want to kill [Rep.] Charlie Rangel with a shovel,” repeated several times in a row on air, and with some detail.

“Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.”

Fantasizes about poisoning Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

“These bloodsucker vampires are not gonna just be satisfied with sucking the blood out of [business], their thirst for power and control is unquenchable. They will not stop… Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or ya [Beck exclaims with pronounced emphasis] drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers” while showing a figure of a ghoulish looking Obama and some other prominent Democrats.

As noted in the prior post, here  is Fox Channel and leading Radio news commentator Glenn Beck, the “anti-Fasicst: “Progressivism,” which he underlines twice, emphasizes with body and unpleasant gestures, jumps up and down on stage, is a “disease,” a “cancer,” that must be “cut out,” and “eradicated.”

And, as noted therein as well, here is someone else who is not quite as famous:

Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence. — 2008 Unitarian Church murderer and attempted mass murderer James Adkisson

Former President Lyndon B. Johnson once said: “It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy.”

It is also a common failing of Glenn Beck.

Yet in addition to having something fairly crucial in common with the totalitarian politics that Beck in his rhetoric hypocritically rails against, Beck also has something stunningly in common with what drives al-Qaida’s murderous activities. As the popular conservative, but not extreme, website “Little Green Footballs” points out, and rightly calls “sickening“:

Beck agrees with caller that people with liberal ideology are God’s enemy, adds “they are enemies of Him.”

It’s that view — that those that they disagree with or who perhaps don’t worship the same concept of God, are “enemies” of GOd — that drives the bases for al-Qaida’s murderous acts against unknown and innocent Westerners. Beck’s rhetoric is just one step removed from then doing the “work of” God (or inspiring others) and removing those whom one views as God’s enemies. A critical step; but yet still, just one step.

As for calling progressivism a “disease” that needs to be “cut out,” and “eradicated,” here is a poorly informed, highly misleading false balance fluff piece in the NY Times which left readers with several false impressions. The first comment, which was also highlighted by the Times’ staff and received 278 recommends, is telling:

What a great article — very informative. I had no idea that the “tea-party” people shared many of my worries and disillusionment with government and corporate America…

But, at the same time, I have never really been attracted to the mainstream republican party. These people, though, if they are the way you describe them, seem much more progressive in their views toward individual rights vs. government than any of the self-proclaimed “progressives” of whom I am aware.

I will start paying much closer attention. I might have just found a new political home.

Since, as the Barstow article along with a host of others makes clear, Beck is essentially the father and guiding force of the Tea Party movement, this must refer to the progressivism of tea partiers rather than the progressivism that their leader says must be “eradicated” like a “disease.”

Here is someone else:

Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.

That someone else was homocidal killer James Adkisson, who in 2008 tried to murder an entire congregation of people in a house of worship because he believed them to be “liberal;” and, very likely, a “disease,” that “needed to be cut out,”and “eradicated.” That he called a “cancer,” much like Beck has on numerous occasions.

It does not seem Beck is saying that people he disagrees with need be murdered (though some people disagree).  He is saying that a prevalent school of political thought — loosely and differently defined by many people, just as is “conservatism” — is not only not to be tolerated; it is the disease in America, and needs to be extinguished.

This is a blind left handed broken arm stone’s throw from advocating the murder of people who have differing political beliefs — that is, the differing beliefs that form the backbone of democracy.

As for advocating outright murder, if people really think that that is what Beck is saying, it is hard to understand how they are not angrier.

Not homicidally angry, but effective, powerful, and repeated action taking angry.

But apart from some ranting and raving here and there (which is also quite different from making a powerful, effective, and saturating presentation),  there is little sign of this, as Beck and his brand of wild misinformation and incendiary inflammation continue to dominate the airwaves.

Even if they don’t believe Beck was subtly justifying violence, the fact that Beck’s repeated and often time maniacal yet overwhelmingly popular manipulations go so repeatedly unchecked and unilluminated by the same “left” that can’t stand him, and considers him a “nut,” is a testament to just how ineffective the left is at defining the issues, questions, personalities and discussion in America today — or their recognition of the need to do so.

If somebody who was one of the two most popular radio commentators in America, and who had a nightly news program on the most watched “proclaimed” cable News Channel in America, stomped up and down on stage while repeatedly underling his/her devil word,”conservatism,” calling it a “cancer” that needed to be “cut out,” and “eradicated” (not to mention many far other more egregious things Beck has said and done), the right would be up in arms.  Figuratively, and probably, literally, too. They’d be taking the reigns of the debate and making the entire case for the nation, in unison, repeatedly, and beating the kowtowed media over the head with it until it knew not what else to parrot besides their talking points, rather than the story itself, under the false balance guise of “one side of” the news.

The left doesn’t do this.  Why? Because they “know” Beck is a nut case.  And they “know” everybody else knows this too. So no real effective and saturated country wide case need be made.

As for those people that have made Beck close to the most influential commentator in America today?  They don’t count. They’re just an illusion.  Just like Adkisson. Or some of the folks that the DHS, in a report initiated under the Bush Administration, were concerned enough about to write an anti terrorism report on.

To some of the “Left” (and maybe even center — as the far right takeover of both the Republican Party, the “News” Channel that started it all, and talk radio in America have often demonized the center as “far left liberals” as well), and despite the fact that Beck is incessantly peddling rampant misinformation along with quasi violence inciting rhetoric, a democracy is not based upon the quality of its information, because “everybody knows better” — everybody already has all the information they need!

But not only does “everybody” not know that Beck is profoundly wrong most of the time, but sometimes, they take his rantings as literally, if not more so, than he does himself.

This is a disturbing fact to someone who similar to Beck believes a potentially oppressive over controlling government is a real cancer. But not as big a concern as Beck, in his maniacal misrepresentations and rampant misinformation, and what, unchecked as it presently is, that does to our democracy — when correct information is the lifeblood of a democracy; and if anything, and ironically, misinformation, not this or that idea, would be its cancer, or illness.

If one believes in democracy, then it is not ideas which should concern that person; it is misinformation which undermines the foundation of necessary, reasonable discussion of those ideas and the underlying facts. If one does not believe in democracy, well, then, it is “ideas” — specifically ideas of “those who have other ideas you may not like or understand” (or that you think you don’t like, perhaps because you have been completely misled on them, by Beck, and many other people) who you think don’t think like you”), which are the problem; and which, according to Beck, need to be eradicated, like  ”disease,” like a “cancer.” Just like they would be in a totalitarian society,while Beck makes these pronouncements to cheering crowds who are ostensibly motivated onward by freedom.

In an insipid promotional and reality disconnected online Washington Post “forum” that promoted both Beck and a recent book of his, Beck stated:

The only [sic] that would destroy America is us, from the inside…..I think we’re in the same situation here [Similar to Iran with little choice between the two candidates.] Bill Maher said this weekend that Barack Obama was George Bush Lite. What are we fighting over? What is the difference between these two parties?

This is the same Obama that Beck has likened to a ghoul, bloodsucker, and vampire, who could only be stopped by driving a “stake through its heart,” and one of the two parties’ whose “base” political philosophy, he has repeatedly stated, was the disease in America, that needed to be eradicated and cut out like a cancer.

Beck also asserted:

There are reasons to speak out, but tearing ourselves apart over these scraps of freedom is odd. We’ve stopped melting together. Our strength was that we were a melting pot.

Actually, it is Beck who, along with other factors, is tearing this country apart. And the left, Democrats in general (and — this blog trying to be a failed exception — the make believe center, the moderate right, the “punditocracy” class), and the media, are allowing him to do it.

In that same Washington Post forum, and in response to the seemingly fake question: “Should liberals be afraid to say what they believe about the best way forward for the U.S.?” Beck stated:

No. During the Iraq War, for anyone who cares to know the truth, I was on the air chastising people that were saying that Hollywood should shut up or that if you have a different opinion you should shut up. I was of the opinion that there’s nothing wrong with vigorous debate, what George Washington called the “battlefield of opinion.

So long as that battlefield does not include what, depending on how broadly it is defined, ranges up to about half or a little over half of the country’s political philosophy:  in which case it is not just “wrong,” but a cancer, a “disease,” that needs to be eradicated and wiped out.

Debate is good. Just so long as it’s debate that Me, Glenn Beck, is okay with.

A guy named Adolf Hitler thought the exact same way.  The same Hitler who lead the Nazis that Beck repeatedly and more than a little ironically labels nearly everyone he disagrees with (or thinks he disagrees with.)  That is, when he is not calling for whatever it is they stand for, to be “eradicated.” Like the cancer that it is.

Beck, of course, is not the only one.  Among others, two other leading talk show hosts — one of whom also has a popular nightly program on the same “self proclaimed” news channel which runs Beck’s nightly program —  have manifestos to this disease, as a “mental illness,” the “enemy within,” and as part of the trifecta of evil along with “despotism and terrorism. (Books by these two, along with those of a third radio personality who also has a very popular show on the same station that Run’s Beck and the other commentators,were found in Adkisson’s House after his homocidal rampage.)

Beck is just the most extreme, the most manipulative, the most incendiary, the most misinformed, the most influential; and, what makes him the most dangerous of all and just like another man in history, the most mesmerizing and innocent appearing.

Suggest that this was and is a terrible idea, and one is immediately called all sorts of names, at least on the blogosphere. Even liberals have been routinely sabotaged by other liberals (this is something that liberals are exceedingly good at, while not so good at sabotaging their political opponents); Suddenly, otherwise respected bloggers, are “selfish assholes” — never mind their reasons — for not aggreeing with or supporting the recent health care “reform” even if they, along with Republicans, supported many of its goals.

This is extremely negative, if not very telling, in its ramifications.  As if people are not allowed to disagree, or have different points of view, simply because “well this is health care, and it’s too important.”  That it’s “too important,” makes it just as important, as with everything else in a democracy, for reasonable disagreement and different points of view — including whether a bill one might consider bad (and others might disagree) should pass because it contains things some consider (or insist) are “good.”

(Of course, and here is where the problem comes in, many think there can be no other reasonable point of view on this recent bill. As a side note, this is in keeping with a lot of Democratic Party presumption, and is part of why they often fail to make an effective case outside of to their own choir: — not only is there only one correct answer, but everybody, “of course,” knows it, and anybody who doesn’t — usually it’s their political opponents but on health care it was many Democrats as well — is either being a “selfish asshole,” or, more commonly, in the case of their political opponents, an “evil liar;” as opposed to simply being wrong or mislead by their own ideological belief. Therefore they don’t tend to even bother to see why other representations, even often highly misleading ones, are resonating with so many people (or, worse, even that they are), and so don’t effectively address them, or use them — when those other misrepresentations are highly misleading grossly misinformed, or illogical — to effectively frame and define their opponents.  This is a big part of the reason why the Republican Party has been taken over by its own right wing the past ten years. There is no real effective check on it and its increasing rhetoric.  Not the Democratic Party, nor the media, which has devolved into a parroting he said she said stenographer and enabler of group think and popular lowest common denominator thought as “fact,” rather than an independent investigative check upon it all.)

In a conversation recently with one of the reps with my own, large, health care insurer, involving why we have an almost non existent inflation rate yet my already expensive premiums had just gone up a stunning over 25% year over year, I volunteered a solution for the healthcare problem. I acknolwedged that it was not perfect for health insurance companies (and it certainly did not mandate coverage), but it did provide them, in exchange for one or two reasonable requirements, a release from an inordinate number of other requirements that were ultimately impinging upon patient care slightly, and, more significant were the cause of most of the exorbitant costs we are seeing.

Health care has provided no easy answers, but a solution finally evolved which protected markets, protected individuals, protected choice, lowered government costs tremendously while increasing the efficacy and reach of low income protective coverage, and lowered health care costs all around while allowing not only consumers, but even health insurance companies, more choice and freedom; however, much more subject to the restraints of actual competition, both from other insurance companies (including of course across state lines) and even if in potential only, individuals who had the means and elected to save money and hassle in the long run by self insuring (or simply covering medical expenses) in combination with catastrophic coverage protection.

“Did I not just solve (the gist of) the health care problem in America with this plan?” I asked her.  ”You did,” she obligingly but yet enthusiastically stated.  ”And in a way that liberals would be happy, because this meets far more of their goals for increased protection and decent care for people than the current plan, and one that those in the so called false “political middle,”  moderate right [all seven of those people still left in America -- I left that part out] conservative right, and extreme right would all largely embrace?”  ”Yes. You need to run for office, you should run for office,” she said.

I decided a simple, “not my cup of tea” response would aptly substitute for the reality. That is, our best and brightest don’t get elected, and our current state of misinformation, over demonization, false liberal “acquiescence” to far right and right wing demands that they don’t seem to even understand (and which in health care they actually just in some measure legitimized — something that is often hard to do in America today) tends to lead to the consideration and implementation of our worst ideas instead.

Hell, most of our best and brightest ideas, in such a state of rhetoric, hype, clique-ish self reinforcment and media confusion of expertise with lowest common denominator popularity (think Sarah Palin — classic example), demonization, liberal presumptiveness and unchecked far right wing zealotry, don’t even see the light of day.  (Here’s an example (and its corollary) of one I submitted informally via email to a few Senatorial aides. Notice what we have done with it, in comparison to what our Senate has put out the last several years.)

In the meantime, on health care here is what the Los Angeles Times just reported:

The top executives at the nation’s five largest for-profit health insurance companies pulled in nearly $200 million in compensation last year — while their businesses prepared to hit ratepayers with double-digit premium increases…

“Well, they should earn a lot of money.”  Yes, fine. But not when the government is in effect mandating that all individuals must (as a practical matter, or lose more money in excessively high penalties if not) buy their services.

Incidentally, the health care solution cryptically alluded to above, natural and immediate skepticism and likely lack of interest in just yet another website opinion notwithstanding, will be revealed. Maybe someone who can run for the Senate and win, or someone already there, can take it up; and we can stop spending a ridiculous fortune of government and private money on this behemoth monstrosity while at the same time care, relative to the level of our knowledge and technological capabilities, continues to stink (and many still remain without any adequate care at all) while the entire system is weighed down further by a mountain of paperwork and unnecessary bureaucratic reviews and involvements.

Stay tuned. To somewhere.  Maybe to here. Maybe to your Senator. After she and I (or he and I) have talked.

Jim Webb, you ready to have lunch?

So one imagines that on the rare occasion that the paper ventures to outside sources from among its constant inundation of submissions, that it chooses its pieces carefully.  And, in its search for someone to provide an informative piece on climate change risk, the Times apparently must have heavily scoured experts from around the globe, finally settling upon one from New Zealand.

What follows is how this chosen expert’s fantastic work of reason, logic, and well tied in fact might have made its way onto the famed and highly selective pages of the “paper of record,” the NY Times:

(NEW ZEALAND PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR DENIS) DUTTON: I think we are overreacting on climate change.

NYT:   Why?

DUTTON: Because sometimes people overreact.

NYT:  Sometimes people also under react. Why are we over reacting, rather than under reacting, here?

DUTTON: Because apocalypses are intriguing.

NYT:  That’s not a reason for assigning over reaction. That’s a suggestion, if  it is determined that we are overreacting, why we are, not an argument that we are .

DUTTON: Err, uh, yeah, but, um, high seas, vicious storms, potentially catastrophic scenarios, people love this stuff, therefore we must be overreacting.

NYT: Are you saying we are overreacting to this because while most scientists are saying this will be a bad to really bad thing, we must be overreacting to what the scientists are saying because “people are fascinated with apocalypses?”

DUTTON: Yes.

NYT: That completely avoids the relevant facts of the issue, and is also a bit, well, ridiculous.  The main warning is we are doing something destructive to ourselves and our world long term. You are saying that doing potentially destructive things to ourselves is something we tend to overreact to?

While there’s plenty of things we overreacted to because they were sexy — like asteroids hitting the earth — there’s plenty of things we have repeatedly under reacted to, like the threat of al-Qaida before 9/11,  Nazi Germany, Glenn Beck today, along with plenty of other scientific warnings we ignored and which, as a result of, tens of thousands of people a year die of cancer today while even newborn babies are borne with debilitating neurological defects or learning disabilities, etc.

Also, and perhaps even more importantly, this entire climate concern thing is based on uncertain and very hard to pin point projections of unspecified times in the future, that also, in many fundamental respects, such as temperature changes or “bad weather,” seem normal; yet you are saying we are overreacting to threats that scientists are calling very real but that seem abstract to many? Wouldn’t  it tend to be the other way around?

DUTTON: No, no no.  People find apocalypses  intriguing!!! Don’t you get that?

NYT: An assessment of whether we are overreacting or underreacting comes from an unemotional, dispassionate (and, hard as that is today, well informed) analysis of the facts relative to our overall collective responses to them. Then, once and if you have determined that we are over or under reacting, you might offer “theories” as to why this is the case. You’ve both avoided and thoroughly confused the issue, and gotten the logic largely backward.  You have not shown or made an argument even supporting the claim that we are overreacting here; but rather simply speculated that we are overreacting here because “sometimes we do.” This is like saying asserting that right now it is raining in China (as opposed to not raining)because “sometimes it rains” when you have no knowledge of the pertinent facts. Besides, this also isn’t really about apocalypse, not that that matters.

DUTTON: Well, to some of the most extreme and exaggerated voices, it is.

NYT: So you are saying what makes this an overreaction is not the general warning that this is very counterproductive, if not highly destructive long term, but instead the abstract notion — that skeptics of climate change more than anyone have turned this into — that this is about saving mankind from assured destruction; and, that therefore the general warning by scientists that this is very counterproductive if not in some ways potentially catastrophic long term is an overreaction?

Is that why almost half the country thinks the issue is nonexistent or minimal, causing most scientists who actually study the issue to want to pull their hair out, because “people are fascinated with apocalypses and so are overreacting?”

DUTTON: Yes, and Yes.

NYT: That makes no sense. Also, what you are saying is “people are fascinated with apocalypses” so scientists are over-reacting to this because of apocalypses while people in general are under-reacting?

DUTTON: No. I’m just saying that we find apocalypses intriguing, so therefore, naturally, we are over reacting on climate change. Even we we are largely ignoring the issue while scientists repeatedly attempt to warn us, we are, don’t you see, overreacting, because we are fascinated with apocalypses!

NYT: It seems to us that you are saying is “people are fascinated with apocalypses” so scientists are over-reacting to this because of apocalypses while people in general are under-reacting.

But completely ignoring the fact here that most scientists say people are under-reacting, you are then in turn arguing here that people are nevertheless overreacting simply because people tend to sometimes overreact to potentially bad scenarios, even though there are plenty of times we under-react, and plenty of arguments as to why we under-react that would very specifically apply here.

So do you have anything more than the fact that while to potentially really bad scenarios “we overreact sometimes,” we under-react other times, we are overreacting this time, essentially based upon the reasoning that “we overreact sometimes”?

DUTTON: Yes, yes, of course.  Here goes. Here is my reason.  Drumroll please:

“It seems to me.”

NYT: Hey, whoa, that’s pretty darn good! It changes everything!!!

DUTTON: Yes!  And it’s awesome, isn’t it! Also, since this is a scientific issue, why should we bother with actual science, when instead we can bother with stuff that is even better than science!  Namely, science fiction. Because, New York Times, are you ready? I have even more.

NYT: Really, even more for why we are over reacting when the bulk of scientists continue to say we are under reacting, in addition to the amazingly relevant and op ed worthy fact that it “seems” to you that we are! Why, that would absolutely fantastic.

DUTTON: Yes, I am saying exactly that.  I have more. And like I said, it’s even better than science — who needs that anyway. Ready?

NYT: We have almost no room on our very limited and highly sought after op ed page for outside sources, but this clearly seems like it is going to be outstanding enough to make the cut.

DUTTON: Yes, yes, absolutely, because, in addition to the very strong fact that it “seems to me,” I even have yet another reason as to why I am claiming that people are overreacting, despite the fact that scientists — the one’s actually studying this issue — are saying that people are under reacting.  Are you ready?

NYT: Yes, Yes!

DUTTON: “Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein.”

Thus, you see, people are fascinated with this stuff, like Frankenstein; so, therefore, ergo, as a result, thus, voila, we are over reacting on climate change!

So now I’ve given yet another reason why in sometimes people overreact in general (just like we sometimes under react or vastly underestimate) without one bit even of suggestion or support as to why we are overreacting here! And no one will ever notice.

NYT:  Including us.

However, brilliant and relevant as this argument of yours now quite obviously is  is, it’s still, um, a largely tautological and unsupported sentence or two, not an op-ed. It’s very slight, but do you see the difference?  That is; Largely tautological and and unsupported sentence, versus complete op-ed piece.   Thus, in addition to mentioning apocalyptic visions and maybe a few more Frankenstein examples, can you largely fill in the bulk of the piece with a wholly irrelevant yet excruciatingly detailed example of a time when we over-reacted as opposed to under-reacted, perhaps regarding something which has absolutely nothing in common with the current situation save for the fact that we “over reacted” which, of course, since we already know that sometimes we overreact, sometimes we under-react, makes it about as relevant as the price of tea in China?

DUTTON: You mean like how if I theorized, with no support, that your publisher was having a steamy affair, I might write a piece about how on another occasion someone else had a steamy affair and provide excessive details about it, throw in the idea that “it seems to me” that therefore yours is also, and “support” it all with the idea that, much like apocalypses, people are fascinated with sex so therefore he probably is having an affair?

NYT: Exactly.

DUTTON: Okay, sure, absolutely. I will talk in excruciatingly irrelevant detail how many people over reacted to Y2K.

[Editor of ELA here:   Ahem, uh, "ahem."  Fear of  enormous breakdowns was not a widespread consensus. Yet with respect to those fears, which were based purely on the unknown of a one time, unique event rather than upon scientific reason and risk assessment of an extremely complex, centuries long global biological, ecological and physics problem, some thought the entire notion of an unavoidable enormous Y2k breakdown just because the years on many computers were in double rather than quadruple digits, was ridiculous, and said so repeatedly.  Including the editor of this site.  As for some of the practical implications it should also be noted that many Y2K computer problems and attendant  breakdowns were diligently worked on and avoided in advance precisely due to concerns.]

NY TIMES:  Yes!

DUTTON: Done. Check  your in box. You now have a piece consisting in its entirety of; the assertion that we are overreacting on climate change because people sometimes overreact; the assertion that are are over reacting rather than under-reacting here because “it seems to me” we are; a reason offered as to why we sometimes overreact rather than reasons offered as to why we oftentimes greatly under-react  – as opposed to reasons why we may be doing either in this particular case; and an excruciatingly detailed example of a time when some overreacted– omitting the fact that since we already know that sometimes we overreact,and sometimes in advance we greatly underestimate  and “under react,” this is about as relevant as which trash can of the many in your building you should throw my inane climate change submission into, which I nevertheless hope that you publish.

NYT: We’ll publish it!

Hard to believe, right?  As the NY Times might very well put it:

If you don’t believe this, come read our pages, December 31, and see for yourself.

Simply saying “We overreact to some things, perhaps we are to climate change, here are some reasons why we are over-reacting here,” flawed as the conclusion that we are overreacting likely is, is fine. Dutton does not come close to doing that, however.  He suggests that sometimes we over react to things; he explains why he thinks we over-react to things sometimes (fascination with the eschatological), and then suggests that “we are over-reacting here” for no reason other than the completely tautological explanation that sometimes we do, along with the completely irrelevant reason why we sometimes do.

If anything, there would be far more driving the idea that we are under-reacting here.  Likely results are many years in the future.  The implications to many, of this, are extremely negative, because of the (flawed) perception that sensibly addressing this means we have to sacrifice our economy. There is a general lack of general scientific understanding among the populace. And our expectations are grounded in what we have come to expect, and the difficulty we seem to have grasping the ideas that 1) there is an enormous time lag here between both cause and effect, and 2) effects are very likely to be non linear (that is, potentially accelerating with increased input and cumulative effect).

Whether that last paragraph was a good or bad (but short) opinion piece, at least it offered reasons. Dutton offers none. What he offered is like suggesting “remember how in medieval times the plague hit, and people did not take it seriously enough;” then spending most of the time writing about how bad the plague was and how wrong everybody was; then offering up a bunch of reasons why in general people often don’t take things seriously enough (and they tend to number far greater than “fascination with eschatology”) and then concluding “it seems to me climate change is the same. The end.”  That would be an inane piece.  And, analogously, it is exactly the logic — and all of it — that the NY Times, incredibly, chose to publish, though a far better example of it at that.

Update: The  NY Times seems at times to be to science understanding and real journalism on this issue as Saddam Hussein was to democracy and open, fair elections in Iraq.  Even its leading “Dot Earth” climate blog, comments included, helps contribute more to the general confusion and misunderstanding on the climate change issue, than to expose and correct it.

This is yet another, and  particularly troubling, example of the fact that our “media” is increasingly becoming a stenographic  reflection of our worst common ignorances, misunderstandings, and rhetoric, than a necessary Fourth Estate investigative and illuminative check upon it.

How repeated comments on the estimable NY Times DotEarth blog, to the constant effect that there is no evidence or support for the consensus of most scientists, continue to get posted and not sufficiently undermined by other commenters and in particular the blog itself, is hard to fathom. Unless — as I have suggested on it back when I inefficiently if not foolishly ventured forth some comments myself — this leading science blog is supposed to serve more as a reflection of the ignorance and disinformation of our national debate, rather than a check and attempt to improve upon it.

ClimateProgress’s Joe Romm suggests a rather harsh but on point reason why this might be the case, in a piece scathingly entitled “Revkin’s DotEarth hypes disinformation posted on an anti-science website”:

One of the reasons for the collapse [in rigorous scientific media coverage] is the media’s refusal to draw a distinction between what scientists say based on actual observations and analysis in the peer-reviewed literature and what anti-science disinformers say based on their total lack of knowledge of the science and general willingness to misrepresent the facts or make stuff up.

The only area I might tend to disagree with Romm on — and it’s minor to his point above —  is the conscious willingness to make stuff up and misrepresent. Sure it’s done a lot, but often I think it is believed by those doing so (or at least the points that it tends to support are believed); it is frequently the way an ideological driven analysis and the human minds works. If  belief is fervently held and/or there are particularly strong (believed) reasons for it, arguments will be concocted that reinforce (and sell) one’s predetermined belief. (Here’s an example of this just posted in comments on Romm’s blog itself.) We see this in spades on the climate change issue — and in some ways, it almost defines it. Although if it were that obvious, then obviously, we wouldn’t be having the national (and even to some degree international) misinformed discussion on the issue that by and large, we are.

Romm’s piece was in reference to this Dot Earth column.  I had written a decent enough comment to that same Dot Earth piece, to which Revkin both responded (see bottom),  and also quoted from at length in a post the next day.  (Which nevertheless wouldn’t update to reflect more than my last name only, for reasons he would not state, or, apparently, change.)

But to that same initial post that Romm critiques, Revkin also printed a somewhat inane email from ideologue and meteorologist Roger Pielke Sr.; another, much worse comment from some random blogger (who mislead or was flat out wrong with respect to almost every substantive point therein); and as Romm  harshly but correctly points out, updated the piece with an analysis by Jerome Ravetz of Oxford University — who in a highly convoluted but poetically written piece of tripe compares “the science is settled” assertion with the gravity and apparent lack of full candor on the “Iraq has WMD’s” assertion. (Indicating, in the process, that he either knows little about either (see here, or the second half of here), or his fervent ideology on this issue has gotten in the way. Not to mention the fact that the Ravetz letter appeared on one of the most powerful disinformation sites out there.)

The WMD certainty or near certainty belief was widely held. But not that widely held. And by mid-March of 2003 when we commenced military action, outside of this country and a few others, it was not a belief that was widely held by those at all remotely involved in the process.  It had been mainly believed in the absence of actual data, based upon Iraq’s history and pattern of non cooperation. Unlike climate change, it did not require looking into a crystal ball regarding long term future scientific effects in what amounts to a long term and wild experiment upon the entire earth’s climate, with no “sister” or control earth’s by which to assess differences in hindsight. It required confirmation of something that either did or did not exist at the time.

After weapons inspectors went back into Iraq on November 27, 2002 and conducted viable weapons inspections in Iraq for the first time in numerous years (up until they were ordered out on the eve of our military action commencement on March 19, 2003),  they found no substantial evidence to support what every nearly major intelligence report emphasized was a presumption rendered in the absence of verified data from Iraq, and were universally saying to “wait.”

Ravetz might be very scholarly.  But to compare that to a widespread consensus opinion that — by the actions of putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to the point where atmospheric levels of said gases, in total global warming potential equivalent GWPe (that is, taking into account the relevant long lived gases as noted above, and their various heat trapping potential reduced to a common denominator) are now approaching heat levels not seen in many millions of years — we are effecting future climate, is asinine.

Then of course there is this comparison, which makes the equivalency of Ravetz’ “the science is settled,” and “Iraq had WMDs” assertions even more asinine;  We have to get off of fossil fuels anyway.  They are finite. Their continued reliance harms national security and sends hundreds of billions each year overseas to often unfriendly regimes for a natural commodity which (in the case of oil) we simply don’t have nearly enough of on our own; they are highly polluting otherwise; and in the case of coal even lead to often excessive ecosystem damage in their acquisition, and in usage to the bio accumulation of toxins, such as mercury, in our food supply.

Even more importantly, as far as the climate goes, we can’t ever know exactly how much we will effect it until well after the fact (not to mention sufficiently after the fact to have given us enough time to accommodate for the large multi decade plus lag between cause and effect, and to iron out the enormous inherent variability of climate itself on top of that); but it is an enormous risk that will likely affect our children and their children far more than us, and one that an overwhelming number of actual climate and geophysical scientists who have studied the issue are in agreement, for basic, sensible reasons, is quite high.  The entire question is one of risk assessment, not of certainty of ‘X’ or “Y”result.

Iraq was  a monumental unilateral military engagement (now, seven years later, still ongoing) based not upon a risk assessment that Iraq had WMDs (for even if they did, plenty of nation’s do, it is not necessarily a reason for pre-emptive military action);  but upon “the fact” that Iraq did have them, and that therefore pre-emptive aggressive military action was justified. The risk assessment itself was based upon the assertion of this fact.

There is nothing remotely corollary to the climate change issue, nor, by the very nature of it, can there be. The only “proof” or evidence that has come in has tended to bolster the perception of the underlying climate change problem — in may ways, rather powerfully and extremely coincidentally. Critics of this often however confuse this so called “proof” or (as better terminology), evidence, with the problem itself, when it is most decidedly not the problem, but (likely) merely some very early, and highly trailing, evidence of it.  It is no surprise that if Watt’s Up is going to find a professor from a seemingly eminent Institution somewhere (among the tens of thousands of professors from eminent Institutions), he would find one who does not get this, among other things.

As for the “climategate” scandal which Ravetz also makes such a WMD type fuss over, see the summary of my email to Revkin below, highlighted in bold: As noted therein:

How much attention have the critic providers of alternative work to Michael Mann’s [and Phil Jones']  work received? To a tee, they all manipulated data more than Mann [or Jones] did.

But one doesn’t hear about how their data compilations comprise the “science scandal of the decade.”  Yet most if not all of the data compilations put together by critics targeting the methodology and even integrity of Jones or Mann were repeatedly shown to have been more manipulated, if anything.  Yet nothing remotely approaching the same level of widespread public  scrutiny and condemnation has ever been applied.

The reason for this? There are very few people who decided it would be a good thing if the future climate was being royally screwed up; but countless — including many who have (or wrongly believe they or we have) strongly vested interests — who have predetermined that it would be a good thing if we are not, and have sought diligently to arrive at the end result conclusion, where belief is driving the analysis rather than vice versa.

Thus Mann and Jones’s work has been pilloried as a sort of  scandal of the decade. (Despite the fact that data supporting Mann’s hockey stick is still stronger than data not supporting it, and the fact that if the earth has shifted even more in the past than we think, thus rendering Mann’s “hockey stick” less oblique than as presented, this only means the climate is even more sensitive to or apt to ultimately, easily change, not less.)  Whereas creative critiques “proving” otherwise or any number of other fallacious or misinformed claims, has not nearly been so illuminated.  Indeed, media sources, often scurrying to provide the false patina of “balance” but providing anything but, have often promoted these as some sort of ’side’ to a ‘debate,’ and ideological interests have zealously pushed this point further.  (Revkin himself even recently and quite strongly played into this general trend of seeking false balance rather than simply the best and most relevant scientific inquiries of all types — and why I think he was well off base to do so.)

The disinformation site Watts Up With That, where Ravetz’ inanely contorted piece appears — the same one that Revkin promoted along with the Watts Up site itself  – engages in more misrepresentation on the underlying issue than Mann or Jones ever did – and does so on a fairly ongoing basis.)

(In reading Ravetz’ highly contorted but well presented piece, however, I can’t help but think that if pro climate change advocates assessed this in broader language, and stopped falling prey to the desire to overemphasize trailing temperature data — which is not the basis for the problem — at least some understanding would be improved.)

As Romm puts it:

The reason I am writing this post, however, is not any of the above.  It’s the staggering update Revkin has:

[UPDATE, 8 p.m.: In an interesting guest post on WattsUpWithThat, Jerome Ravetz, a longtime student of the intersection of science and society, explores the panel's travails and related issues.]

No, no, a thousand times no.

In general, you can assume that if Watts has reprinted a piece, it is filled with anti-scientific disinformation.  It’s kind of like the laws of thermodynamics.  If someone tells you they have a perpetual motion machine, you don’t actually have to look at the design closely to know that, in fact, they don’t.

Now the least Revkin could do is quickly skim this nonsensical piece to see if, yes, it is in fact a perpetual disinformation machine, like all of Watts’ other posts.  It’s just pure anti-scientific garbage masquerading as … well, it’s masquerading as mostly anti-scientific garbage.

A decent enough example of the ideologically driven Watts Up With That disinformation site is found here, noting:

The idea that weather does not define climate was examined here.  But A. Watts’ “Watts Up With That?” webblog elected to simply re post verbatim excerpts — note that the site often simply reposts large chunks or an entire article verbatim without much or any additional commentary, insight or analysis — from an original snowfall article,with the simple, snarky introduction:

More from the “weather is not climate department.”

Read through the 154 comments to the snowfall article to see if this kind of subtle (and very often not so subtle)‘arguing’ doesn’t have a profound effect on shaping and misinforming the discussion. Unfortunately, as a perusal of the comments on the site at any point in time aptly illustrate, it does.  (Here’s an interesting related video, which Watts improperly had YouTube take down, and which was then put back up: see from minutes 3:56 on — as the earlier part is peripheral, and it is true, someone does have to defend smokers.)

Watt’s article completely neglected to mention that this unprecedented summer snowfall in Australia also happened during one of the hottest, and driest, Australian summers on record, following an even hotter summer, and during the continuance of Australia’s worst long term drought on record (which also included its worst short term drought on record).

The link to the very popular but designedly anti climate science site Watt’s Up, and Ravetz’ misunderstanding of the state of science and what “settled” means and does not mean, along with his misunderstanding of the scientific basis for, and the fact of, the overwhelming relevant scientist consensus that we are now in the process of affecting future climate (see endnotes here for support), not surprisingly, was also provided by another near constant misinforming and/or misinformed commenter on Revkin’s blog; to whom Revkin directly responded:

I added a link to it earlier tonight…. Thanks for posting here. Well worth reading.

No, Andy, it wasn’t.

To the same post yet again, Revkin also highlighted a comment by yet another clearly driven ideologue — who for some perhaps not so coincidental reasons seem to get attracted to Revkin’s Dot Earth blog like moths to light. (It’’s a venerable NY Times blog and considered influential, hence a good place to go to try and influence public opinion, and Revkin puts up with, and occasionally even promotes, a good deal of misrepresentation, and worse.)

This commenter was responding to an IPCC statement to the effect that “[the data] show that recent warming is inconsistent with internal climate variability and other external influences alone,” and wrote:

This statement is simply absurd! How can these people sit there and make statements about what is and what is not consistent with internal climate variability when they have no idea what all of the elements of climate variability are? Ask them to explain what elements of climate variability are responsible for overriding the effects of CO2 for the most recent twelve years, and they have absolutely no clue.

Number one, 12 years are not that consequential climate wise — the longer term trend of statistically significant warming over the past 150 years, is– depending upon what happens within those twelve years. (Proving the negative of a causal effect on an inherently variable and long term system always takes a certain amount of accumulated data,proving the opposite, or the high likelihood of the opposite, depending upon the actual data itself, also takes a lot of data, but to varying degrees less depending upon the extremity of the data itself.)

Number two, whether or not some aspects of the IPCC’s generalized language and explanations could have been better or not, this commenter badly confuses the inability to precisely map climate with both precision and short term precision, with any ability whatsoever to ascertain broad parameters of climatic effect.

And, number three, those same 12 years which this commenter asserts negated any impact of CO2 (which impact, again, is far more significant long term, and with a large time lag to boot, anyway) have witnessed ten of the eleven warmest years on record. Just another tiny little oversight.  But to him, because we can’t do the near impossible and model it down to all of the huge variability, it is then “absurd” that we can know anything at all.

It’s a scientifically specious, or just extremely misinformed comment.  Yet Revkin highlighted it.

But he’s highlighted worse.

And linked to worse pieces, as Romm points out.

As I wrote to Revkin recently, in part explaining my decision to not waste time posting comments on that blog unless and until standards for accountability and for true, dispassionate, science objectivity rather than false balance equilibrating are improved, essentially:

You [recently gave] a speech at Warren College about changing mindsets, in a world that is different than the one that exists out here. And the reason the world is different is due to facilitating and playing into the misrepresentation and misleading and ideological driven zealotry where any workable and self believable and thus highly sellable manipulation is arrived at or contrived in order to fit the “fact” into a pre arranged belief…

By allowing [this] to go unchecked, by providing the forum for it, by sometimes even highlighting for “thoughtfulness and interesting-ness” what is misleading, manipulated (unintentionally or otherwise), misrepresented, or the comments of those who engage in this, is promoting it. It is promoting, and not checking or improving upon, the basis of our misinformed collective understanding. Not the “understanding” of journalists, or scientists, or only those who have studied the issue intensely, but of all of us, that which shapes our world and our collective response through sensible policies (or not) of what is whether we like it or not, a decidedly collective challenge.

…How much attention have the critic providers of alternative work to Michael Mann’s [and Phil Jones, who together comprise "climategate" as referred to above] work received? To a tee, they all manipulated data more than Mann [or Jones] did. Yet is this nearly as frequently pointed out (or even one tenth as big a deal made about it), do the ideologues call these people criminals and worse, like they do Mann and Jones? Of course not. They call them heroes. I don’t know if you fully get what is driving what can’t even fairly be called a double standards — because double standards pale in comparison — and how putting up with it only perpetuates and furthers the problem; in which case, that is, facilitating or putting up with it, then, really, there is no point in working on the issue.

I imagine that was my ultimate point to Revkin. If it — an estimable blog at the (still somewhat?) august NY Times, or any such ideal journalistic endeavor– is going to try to seek a “common ground” based upon the misinformation perpetuating and entrenching pretense of false equivalency, and vastly differing standards of scientific and logical rigor, then there is no point in pursuing it or engaging in it in the first place. It becomes more a part of the problem, then of the solution.

HCR – A Republican Idea?

That’s what some Republican health policy experts are saying now that it’s too late to matter. I bring this up because it relates very much to the point I raised yesterday about whether the American Enterprise Institute was muzzling its health experts–preventing them from saying publicly that they agreed with much of what Obama and congressional Democrats were doing. (See here and here.)

An excerpt from Bartlett’s second link is also worth noting (emphasis added):

As some readers of this blog may know, I was fired by a right wing think tank called the National Center for Policy Analysis in 2005 for writing a book critical of George W. Bush’s policies, especially his support for Medicare Part D. In the years since, I have lost a great many friends and been shunned by conservative society in Washington, DC.

Now the same thing has happened to David Frum, who has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute. I don’t know all the details, but I presume that his Waterloo post on Sunday condemning Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform was the final straw.

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI “scholars” on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn’t already.”

(On the topic of conservative shriveling, a frightening example is the  drivel published by the Washington Post op-ed page by a super conservative bemoaning the lack of effective conservative ideas, and in closing proposing that the conservative party look to Glenn Beck for “real thought.”)

Regarding the health care plan, if we are going to reform it, why wouldn’t some kind of moderate public option that people can buy into, and that those tens of millions who don’t make enough to pay significant income taxes above Social Security get some coverage under, in some ways makes more sense?  As do other plans, perhaps even more. (Incidentally, it does not seem clear how, under the current bill, those who most need insurance the most will actually be able to afford it, since tax credits are only effective for those who make above a certain threshold.  Presumably many will be covered by forcible employer coverage, but isn’t that a bigger action of government intrusion than merely providing expanded Medicare or Medicaid, being as the government already expends gargauntuan sums as it is, into an out of control, escalating system that soaks it all up often without providing adequate care as it is?)

Still, Bartlett’s point about the rigid tendency for lockstep political opposition even at the expense of sound policy  and informed discussion (and, it seems, this past decade, increasingly far right, thinking and expression), is well taken.  How was it that instead of all this babble from the media about false “bipartisanship,” Americans were not instead hearing about, and wondering, why one of the two political parties was not contributing any ideas of value – but was contributing a lot of misinformation — on a critical policy area where better policy was clearly needed?

Or why were Democrats themselves not framing this far better? (But that’s an old Story. Here is an example of a vintage Democrat attitude on Health care, for instance.)

Bartlett makes some other interesting points as well:

Every Washington think tank these days has an ideological/political tilt and everyone who works there knows perfectly well which side they are on. They work or are affiliated with it knowing that tilt and presumably agreeing with it. And these are smart people who don’t need to have it explained to them explicitly what comments are helpful to their side and which ones aren’t. This is the essence of the point I was trying to make about muzzling.

A more interesting question is why the Obama administration never pointed out the similarity between its proposals and Republican plans such as the one implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. I assume it is because it would be equally counterproductive to Democrats, costing votes among the party’s left wing, which badly wanted the public option. Forcing them to acknowledge that their plan owed more to Republican ideas than Democratic ideas on health would have been like pouring salt in their wounds.

This does not appear as the likely explanation as to why Democrats did not make some sort of story out of these points.  Assuming it to be true, there was no grandeur in being the architect of the actual ideas behind this plan.  Many people did not like the plan, including, quite possibly, some who voted for it.  The grandeur  was in getting some sort of bill passed (For those who see it that way anway; also note the significance by some that was being attached to what was merely getting what many believe is a bad bill passed)– something their opponents were doing everything possible it seemed, to prevent– that is, opposition to any kind of bill.

Democrats did not make this point because they repeatedly fail to use their opponents own words and positions to effectively illustrate, when present, the hypocrisy, negative anti-bipartisanship, and increasing polarization, among other things,of their opponents. And because they don’t tend to focus on properly framing things in ways — or providing this information to the media — that directly communicates with a very broad cross section of America as opposed to those within, or possibly on the fringes of, their own party, whom they often mistake in turn for the whole of America. (See this site — the most popular political website in America – for examples on a hourly, if not more frequent, basis.) They often think that because many of their opponents’ ideas are often extreme, that it is their opponents who are not communicating with a wider cross section of people; confusing the underlying policy positions, or the hypocrisies or misrepresentations that Democrats often believe they perceive, with the political communications of their opponents themselves, when these are something very different.

Bartlett concludes:

In the weeks to come I anticipate that many Republican health experts will acknowledge that HCR owes much to their thinking and little at all to liberal ideas. These Republicans will explain that HCR just needs a little tweaking and gradually talk leaders of their party out of repealing it. These leaders already know that isn’t going to happen anyway, but their public posture will be that HCR must be repealed as long as it animates the Republican base going into November’s elections.

The health care plan in some ways seems very misplaced. It forces things on people. It does imposes a justifiable pre existing condition rule but with no attendant strategies to balance out the inevitable rise in cost. Said rise in cost is already a big part of the health care dilemma in this country — we spend almost twice as much money on health care per capita than any other country in the world, and yet we rank not first, but 38th, in life expectancy.

Of course, there are other factors that go into life expectancy. But the fact remains that our health care is already enormously expensive; both in terms of public and private money, and it is particularly expensive relative to the average quality of care that Americans receive.

To be fair to Bruce’s position, and that of the Bill’s proponents, the first link that Bartlett provided above noted how even Scott Brown in Massachusetts supported a similar proposal, seemingly on the idea that if preexisting condition clauses were going to be prohibited, then some sort of involuntary participation would help prevent a higher rate of non participation by the “healthy” until such time as they become “ill” (at least in theory).

But isn’t this still at heart forcing people in terms of what to do?

The claim is that this plan will lower costs; but even by mandating in the few healthy who can afford it but don’t have health insurance in order to balance out the risk  from others,  it is hard to fathom how it really controls costs when it forces people, against their own free will, to purchase what forms the basis of much of the problem: Excessive and highly bureaucratic middleman “insurance” for, and often semi control over, routine (i.e.,non catastrophic) health care costs.

The problem with this “forced balancing out” or risk type thinking is that it is essentially forcing everyone to collectivize their risk. But why then force it through private companies ? A public option would do this at likely lower cost, and ultimately no more public involvement, while providing a choice for people and not mandating further individual and employer obligations.

As far as the bill goes, one who is not much in favor of it might ask Bruce if he is saying that in some ways saying Republicans are as much to blame for this as Democrats? That it was their bad ideas, and Democrats, so hungry for any type of otherwise needed health care reform, went ahead and implemented them without getting any Republicans on board?

From another perspective, these are ideas which could have perhaps been much improved upon, had we an honest and informed discussion rather than the circus that it turned into. A circus that it turned into due to poor Democratic framing, possible Republican manipulation obfuscation on the issue, and poor media coverage (here’s a classical example for which the Washington Post newspaper had no answer.) And also because,with almost no effective checks upon it any more (with an increasingly emasculated and kow towing “he said/she said” and “false balance” media) it seems like rhetoric is slowly getting out of control in America this new millenium.

As for this bill being as much if not more based upon “Republican” rather than “Democratic” ideas, perhaps Bartlett should also tell that to the increasingly radical wing of his own party.

It is his last paragraph which in some ways is the most notable however. That the bill will probably stand,with Republican approval.

People seem to complain about big government, but they also seem to like it at the same time. (Anyone who can afford to buy health insurance probably will anyway — because bad as it is, one often receives far worse care without it. Those who don’t get health insurance and actually pay their health care bills, also subsidize the cost of both those with health insurance– who almost always get far more favorable rates for the exact same tests, visits and procedures by the exact same care providers– and those who don’t or can’t pay their health care bills. )  Thus the bill is likely to stick around rather than be repealed — or significantly changed. Unfortunately.

But winds are not separate from climate, they constitute a key part of it.

On the popular NYTimes DotEarth blog, here are the first four, of five, comments today in response to a column examing the idea of winds pushing ice southward where it has tended to melt faster, and perhaps serving as a more direct cause of half of the floating ice melt than direct overall ambient warmth itself. (The first two are in full, the next two in part):

Mark Serreze at NSIDC coined the term “death spiral” in 2008 – the same year he incorrectly bet on an ice free pole for that summer.

Arctic ice area is currently normal, which is quite different from a “death spiral.”
http://arctic-roos.org…
Recommend Recommended by 9 Readers

_____

The well-informed amongst us knew all along, of course, that any 2007 ice “crisis” was a result of the winds having pushed a lot of ice out to sea.

Somehow, however, I don’t think the information we knew and you so well lay out made it to the headlines and to the desperate calls to “save the Polar Bears.”

In fact the Department of the Interior rather adroitly used the 2007 ice “crisis” to list the Polar Bear as an endangered species in May 2008… at at time when there were 5 times more Polar Bears that 60 years ago. One might even think the DOI wasn’t using science, but politics!
Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers

_____

Since no one mentioned it, I thought I should bring up well documented earlier Arctic ice summer melts.

The big 1922 Arctic ice summer melt. The Washington Post headline on Nov 2, 1922, was
“Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”
(discovered by John Lockwood)

http://www.washingtontimes.com…

_____

New light shed, or existing ignored light?

To begin, shall we all adjust our Arctic warming clock down approximately 45% accounted for, according to NASA, aerosols or soot:

“The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.”

The soot comes primarily from burning wood,coal and dung, and is partially combusted carbon residue.   But don’t worry, it “doesn’t count.”

The other aerosols here are mainly man made pollutants as well.  They don’t count as well.

Also don’t worry, whatever the state of the earth’s climate 50 years from now, it won’t be because of “climate change;” but instead, anything we can think to label as something other than “climate change.”

Including perhaps, one the most critical components and products of climate — wind itself.

But even the Dot Earth post itself tends to potentially somewhat underplay the role that wind plays in climate, as if understanding some short term mechanisms for specific changes somehow conflicts with the broader understanding of the direction of change that the globe’s increased heat trapping potential is likely to lead to. It is almost as if one expects to hear the following one day when and if climate really ratchets up: “Climate change is not real, increased heat in oceans driving climate, not climate change!” when of course climate change is increased heat retention in oceans (as noted below).

That basic, underlying effect — increasing heat leading to increased heat retention by oceans which ultimately drives climate –  we tend to understand at least to a minimum degree, even if it has been largely overlooked in coverage of the climate change topic. But just because we don’t understand all of the other mechanisms does not mean that when we do find a particularly apparent direct sub climate component cause and effect that “appears” to be coincidental to the actual changes that we would expect to see as a result of “climate change,” does not mean that it doesn’t count. What the climate does on its own or not is a part of the inherent variability that we are dealing with. The conditions we create + that inherent variability will combine to form the end results of what we observe;  in other words, it all counts. Climate change acts upon the system as is, with all its attendant variability, not the system ‘norm,’ as their is no ‘norm.’

If warmer temps lead to thinner ice, which combined with strong winds pushed ice to warmer waters where it melts even faster, whether those winds were a part of the change we are wreaking, coincidental, or a little bit of both, ultimately does not matter.  Things will act in tandem regardless.

I wrote to Andy Revkin, the estimable former NY Times environmental reporter who runs the Dot Earth blog, half suggesting, half asking the following, hoping that Revkin would have something to add that I was missing:

Why the leap to thoroughly disassociate wind patterns from climate?  In the long run, things will happen climate wise:  what largely makes climate change the issue that it is, is the changing systems’ response to those components that make up the forces of weather and climate over time.  As bases change, susceptibility to more change increases.  Even if the specific pattern can not be directly tied to climate change itself (this is always a questionable concept as ultimately climate encompasses everything, but it is understandable given our desire to isolate out and explain various observations), such variability, in part attributable to us or not (again see parenthetical) still produces a different effect than it would upon a more stable base. It is how climate tends to ultimately lurch –and it has geologically, and no reason it might not at some point now.

Even given this caveat about the original article, the comments were still out of sync with what it was conveying, leading the 5th commenter to note:

[I] Suggest you all read the article and ignore the effort to reinterpret the information in the first two comments, and doubtless many to come.

Leading to this question: Why such an exacerbated attempt on the part of commenters on this popular NY Times future climate and ecology blog, to spin everything in a direction away from the basic science of climate change?

Since this winds up repeatedly undermining its purpose, and causing it to become a source of as much if not more disinformation as information, one might ask why the Dotearth blog itself puts up with it or doesn’t at least try and correct it?

Lest one think the above comments are not that bad — and they are not in comparison with the usual — here is a typical example from an earlier post, by someone who in other, often far more misleading, comments, claims to be a mathematical physicist. From this page here:

As the story points out, people always worry – as they should – about changes in climate, freezing and warming alike.

The idea that the cause of these changes, which have always been around, is us is new.

This idea does not appear to be rooted, or search confirmation, in the cold reality of measured data. It seems motivated by a general, vague feeling of guilt.

Actually, the idea is rooted in the fact that due to specific, easily identifiable anthropomorphic activities, we are in the process of taking CO2 that was sequestered deep undeground over hundreds of millions of years, and releasing it back into the atmosphere in what is almost a geologic instant.

And it is rooted in the fact that because of this, as well as an increase in nitrous oxides, a tremendous increase in methane, the development and release of fluorocarbons, and significant net deforestation, we are now at a level of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in total global warming potential equivalent (GWPe) likely not seen in millions of years; and are rapidly adding to that level, at geologically breakneck speed. And the fact that the greenhouse effect, due to these greenhouse gases, is the reason the earth is warm and teeming with life as we know it, rather than largely a frozen ball hurtling almost lifelessly through space.

And because there is no reason, based in physics,  biology, ecology, or climate science, to presume or believe that the greenhouse effect reaches a certain level and “magically” shuts off when greenhouse gases reach a certain point in their range — say, by wild coincidence, that point where they stood just before we started ferociously adding to them beginning in earnest about 150 years ago, and even more so the past several decades.  And there is every reason to believe that the greenhouse effect doesn’t magically “shut off.”

And, perhaps most importantly of all, it is rooted in the fact  that climate is not instantaneous, or linear in response to changes in climate stressors or some type of external forcing. (That is, it takes time for increased trapped atmospheric heat to slowly effect climate sub systems, most notably oceans,which then being to change appreciably many decades after the actual causation; and climate does not respond in an even, symmetrical, fashion.)  Climate is a complex, highly variable phenomenon, with trapped heat but a fleeting precipitator of gradual, increasing system changes which then in turn change climate; including, yes, prevailing winds, and ultimately the oceans themselves, the main driver of climate here on earth.

And, over time, the oceans are, in fact retaining more and more heat.

The main basis for concern over any potential effect on the climate is not rooted in anything we have seen, but in fact of the underlying physics of and biological science of the matter. The problem, or “challenge,” could have been realized, theoretically, in advance even of any anthropomorphic activities. In fact the beginnings of our increasing atmospheric trapped heat climate awareness actually had their origins decades ago when the earth was in the process of a short cooling process. (A cooling process that itself was still part of a longer term statistically significant warming trend, which has now at this point seen the eleven warmest years in modern record, all in the last thirteen years of our history.)

But to this commenter, its just a new angle to dismiss all of this, which is just one step short of dismissing the fact that the sun rises in the East — now it’s based in “guilt.”  The day before on the desire of the UN or Al Gore to “control the world.” The day before that on Neanderthal Democrats’ (and some Republicans’) misanthropic desires to return us to the stone age, the day before that it is to get ‘funding money’ (unlike all science the planet over, one presumes), the day before that because — unlike far heavier investments in non “green” technology — vested interests in “green” technology, who invested after it was seen that maybe older energy sources were a long term problem, were nevertheless just self interested, the day before that it was….  But this comment was about average on that blog, and not even nearly among the worst.

How repeated comments on the estimable NY Times DotEarth blog, to the constant effect that there is no evidence or support for the consensus of most scientists, continue to get posted and not sufficiently undermined by other commenters and in particular the blog itself, is hard to fathom. Unless, of course, as I have suggested on it back when I rather inefficiently ventured forth some comments myself — this leading science blog is supposed to serve more as a reflection of the ignorance and disinformation of our national debate, rather than a check and attempt to improve upon it.

.

…..There is only one battle to be waged: Outlaw all bribes of government employees. Ban outright, any corporate money in politics. Limit annual campaign contributions to a maximum $250 per individual for any candidate. Enforce a life-time employment ban on revolving doors. If there is no financial incentive for selling votes to the highest bidders, then our government is stuck representing us, we the people.

This person fails to recognize –and in quite the opposite direction — that under our new, going in the direction of radical, Supreme Court (where a solid but non radical conservative — Justice Kennedy, made a mistake, and sided with four somewhat extreme leaning Justices) corporations are people too.

Regarding the financial meltdown and all of our bank bailouts, I put a comment up to Rich’s piece. What a mistake. Point missed. Overlooked. I suppose had I called bankers scoundrels, crooks, criminals who deserved to be tarred, feathered, and worse (as can be seen in several of the comments, including popular ones — it seems people love to mob rule scapegoat), then it would have gotten some attention.

What did Lehman Brothers do wrong? If principles did something illegal and immoral, then it is a criminal action. That is actionable. If not, then they did what they are allowed to do — take financial risk, and even do so foolishly.

And then their company goes bankrupt. And they fail.

That is the way it is supposed to work. Only people, rightly or wrongly, argued that they were “too big too fail.”

And whose fault was that?

We keep focusing on the surface of problems, and not the roots. We ignore, dismiss, or downplay the slow decline of our media, the increasing gap between rhetoric and reality, and increasing misinformation and even disinformation (extreme, yet leading example of the worst of this combined with wildly inflaming and demonizing rhetoric, here).

What were the root causes of this latest financial meltdown. Greed? Greed is good: Gordon Gecko, “Wall Street.” The pursuit of profit oils and drives our market. It’s not a bad thing. Financial risk is a good thing too, and with risk comes downside. When the industries are private, and the downside is nevertheless for the public, something is not working right.

It seemed right off the bat that there were two basic problems here (perhaps, among others that could use sensible redress; this is not an argument against any reform per se necessarily). Thus the comment linked to above, and largely overlooked, suggested:

Isn’t a big part of the problem that companies should be able to do whatever they want financially, with two minor corrections [required] for where we have gone astray over the past ten plus years?

1) They should be able to do whatever they want financially, but not if they are being backed or guaranteed by the U.S. government. That seems a simple one, and seemed a simple one at the time when Glass-Steagall was repealed a little over ten years ago, changing this.

2) The whole ‘too big to fail’ phrase has seemingly still not clued us in to what the real problem is. Lack of antitrust oversight. Capitalism is not oligopoly. Capitalism is true and robust competition. (In real capitalism, excessive, rather than fair, profits are often ephemeral, since competition will provide viable alternatives for consumers and business users alike.) Yet we have become a nation that has become implicitly antitrust phobic.

‘Too big to fail’ means that in capitalism, it is too big to exist as such. If it’s too big to fail, there is not true, robust efficient competition, and it means we have not adequately enforced antitrust laws.

Oddly, the intrinsic belief that capitalism needs no laws for its protection, rather than only requiring the protection from laws, is an oversimplification at best. When it comes to the most fundamental aspect of all, free and robust competition, antitrust laws lie at the heart of our system of free and competitive enterprise.

And their application, rather than their repeated dismissal, also precludes this “too big to fail” nonsense.

Are these suggestions not relevant?

Or is just easier, and in an overly blogified, comment thread, Internet information and misinformation, rhetoric, polarizing and often shouting and spin match age, to simply call all bankers the worst kind of scoundrels, now, and in response fight to over regulate rather than address the roots?

It seems so.

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[Introduction]

I just briefly perused your website, and found it both interesting, and well presented. I do take issue with several of the assertions and assumptions, but I thought it more relevant here to take issue with one very significant, in fact central, statement which you make, and for which, you have some apparent support [Edit: The word support is a bit misleading here; what was meant was that the idea is held by others.] Namely, on this page here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/

“Since computerized climate models are the main source of concern over manmade global warming.”

I don’t think that they are. The great science historian Naomi Oreski has correctly noted, for example, “Indeed, one could reject all climate models and still accept the consensus position because models are only one part of the argument—one line of evidence among many.”

For some people, they may be the main source of concern. There are a few reasons for this. Perhaps the most important is the overwrought desire to achieve a level of precision and exacting prescience, which makes it far easier to convey that this is a problem than does the more conceptually difficult idea of a range of risks in combination with a range of probabilities as to what those risks are based in turn then again upon a known set of factors.

Models also give a potentially powerful way to further our understanding, and begin to test certain ideas. (Unfortunately, however, models DO NOT give us a way to test the idea that our activities now will have a very strong effect on future climate, and I believe confusion over this is prevalent.) They give a way to further refine, and work with, data.

They provide a starting point rather than an ending point; namely, this is a problem, here are the ranges, we can update and possibly further refine with further observation, but there’s not much else without something approximating modeling. They hold out the ideal of that much else. They are obviously an invaluable aspect of the study of this phenomenon, and are heavily focused on for the reasons just stated (and perhaps others). This DOES NOT, however make them the basis for concern.

Some over-reliant statements by climate scientists upon models notwithstanding (and quite consistently I believe), I would strongly assert to all those who do claim that computerized models are the main source of concern over climate science, that this view is highly mistaken. I don’t believe that computerized models are even close to the main source of the most legitimate concern over manmade climate effect. I also believe there are plenty of leading scientists who, for the most part, agree. (Not that, as you I am sure are well aware, general agreement or disagreement proves or disproves the vitality of an assertion, but it is often relevant to note.)

Of course, we could now examine the actual causes for (for lack of a better word) “concern,” but then that would make this email untowardly long. But I wanted to emphasize to you that this idea that models form the basis and rationale for why our atmospheric greenhouse gas altering activities pose a robust long term problem, is highly mistaken.

Of course, to accept this, you might have to re work some of the approach you have taken to the issue. Thus you might not accept it. But I believe you would then be in grievous error on the issue.

[closing]

As of yet, I have not received a response; any responses received will be duly noted.