Patterico's Pontifications

8/26/2012

Climategate Figure Threatens Multiple Lawsuits to Squelch Criticism

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:43 pm



Investor’s Business Daily:

In an attempt to defend his role in the greatest scam of modern times, Climate-gate’s poster child threatens to defend his tarnished reputation in court. First, hide the decline, then hide the deceit.

‘Get lost” was National Review editor Rich Lowry’s appropriate response to a threatened lawsuit by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann.

NR printed a post by the great Mark Steyn, who graces these pages as well, calling Mann’s famous hockey-stick graph “fraudulent.” That it is indeed a fraud has been documented by many, including us.

Mann was at the heart of the Climate-gate scandal in 2009, when emails were unearthed from Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. In one email sent to Mann and others, CRU director Philip Jones speaks of the “trick” of filling in gaps of data in order to hide evidence of temperature decline:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline (in global temperatures),” the email read.

National Review is not backing down:

Lowry says he welcomes such a suit, which may include Steyn himself, saying he’s willing to go to the mat and use the discovery process to unearth every last jot and tittle of climate deception by Mann and his partners in fraud.

“He’s going to go to great trouble and expense to embark on a losing cause that will expose more of his methods and maneuverings to the world,” Lowry writes. “In short, he risks making an ass of himself. But that hasn’t stopped him before.”

But wait! He’s not done!

The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a letter on August 21 from an attorney representing Penn State University Professor Michael E. Mann that demands that CEI retract and apologize for a post on CEI’s blog, Openmarket.org, written by CEI adjunct scholar Rand Simberg. The letter also threatens that they “intend to pursue all appropriate legal remedies on behalf of Dr. Mann.”

“The Other Scandal in Unhappy Valley,” the July 13, 2012 blog post at issue, criticized Professor Mann, a climate scientist who is recent years has become a leading advocate in the public debate for global warming alarmism. Mann was the lead author of research that fabricated the infamous hockey stick temperature graph. The hockey stick was featured in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but was dropped in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007). E-mails from and to Professor Mann featured prominently in what became known as the Climategate scandal.

In response to the letter from Mann’s attorney, CEI offered the following statements.

Statement by CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman:

This week CEI received a letter from Michael Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams of Cozen O’Connor, demanding that CEI fully retract and apologize for a July 13th OpenMarket blog post concerning Mann’s work. Shortly after that post was published in mid-July, CEI removed two sentences that it regarded as inappropriate. However, we view the post as a valid commentary on Michael Mann’s research. We reject the claim that this research was closely examined, let alone exonerated, by any of the proceedings listed in Mr. Williams’s letter.

Link via Instapundit.

Threatened lawsuits to shut up criticism. Where have we seen this before?

And how well has it worked?

219 Responses to “Climategate Figure Threatens Multiple Lawsuits to Squelch Criticism”

  1. Instapundit says the discovery should be interesting.

    Heh. Indeed.

    Patterico (83033d)

  2. Watching Steyn being cross examined by some lawyer will be entertaining.

    mg (44de53)

  3. “I’ve just completed Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline (in global temperatures),”

    Mark Steyn and National Review are right.

    Mann is a shameful fraud. Like other top flight con men, he exploits lawfare to get silence from his critics. Like other top flight con men, he will instead make himself much better known and understood as a result.

    Mann is worse than the zealous global warming panickers. I am convinced by Mann’s own words that he knew he was hiding the truth. I’m convinced that he was willing to trample on actual scientific progress because he found protecting the global warming concept to be more profitable.

    Dustin (73fead)

  4. He’s going to reinvent the Streisand Effect.

    Steven Den Beste (99cfa1)

  5. And yet he produced 111 episodes of Miami Vice. When did he lose his way? Oh, wait…

    Gazzer (a90f39)

  6. Mark Steyn’s piece on Mann was great. I’m sure Mann did his usual in depth research and found Steyn has a history of folding under threats to his free speech. Heh.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  7. “I am not a statistician” ain’t a lawyer neither.

    I thin the comparison with Sandusky as Penn State rapist of data might have pushed the fat man over the edge.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  8. IIRC Mann did successfully intimidate Minnesotans 4 Global Warming (M4GW) into pulling their satirical song Hide the Decline from the web, but I think M4GW is just a few friends having fun, not somebody with a budget and will to stand up to the intimidation.

    Yes, please, make our collective day and invite Steyn and NRO to a deposition party. Where can we get tickets??

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  9. CEI’s apology should read as follows:

    “We are sorry that Mann continues to claim his Hockey stick is not an illusion. Please accept are sincere apologies.”

    Joe (a00dc1)

  10. The McShane/Wyner study should give everyone a good flavor of the dispute of the 2008 version of the hockey stick. McShane/Wyner study using the 95 temperature data sets (based on the assumption that the data sets were valid – a favorable assumption) found that there was a 80% confidence level that the 1997-2006 period was the warmest 10 year period in the last 1,000 years.

    Mann’s response was that using 55 data sets, his study showed a 99% confidence level that the 1997-2006 period was the warmest 10 year period in the last 1,000 years. (throwing out 40 data sets – caveat – I am unable to tell if the discarding of the 40 data sets was valid). It should be noted that Mann used the bristlecone pines as a good long term proxy even though they did not pick up the North American heat wave of the 1930’s.

    While I am not an expert in statistics, getting a confidence level greater that 80% with only 55 data sets is not likely, yet Mann gets to a 99% confidence level – ie a highly improbable conclusion. That is assuming the data sets are solid/valid.

    See the pdf files for the Mann / Mcshane /Wyner discussions

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/13/mcshane-wyner-hockey-stick-smackdown-redux/

    Joe (a00dc1)

  11. #7 I think the comparison with Sandusky as Penn State rapist of data might have pushed the fat man over the edge.

    Comment by gary gulrud — 8/27/2012 @ 3:59 am

    My recollection of the original post by NRO and several others was that the comparison of the Penn State investigation of Mann and the early coverup of the Sandusky affairs was the University was trying to protect the school’s cash cows – in Mann’s case the tremendous government funding and in Sandusky’s case the tremendous football revenues.

    a link to the Penn State exonoration report of mann

    http://live.psu.edu/pdf/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf

    Joe (a00dc1)

  12. Dustin, don’t neglect the organized efforts of Mann and his accomplices to damage the reputations of legitimate climate scientists and other critics by conspiring to prevent the publication of their views and to cut them off from research grants.

    Mann and his gang of climate quacks then used their own underhanded access to research journals to attack the methods and motivations of independent scientists who would not knuckle under to Mann’s corrupt Global Warming dogma.

    ropelight (ecd5c4)

  13. You may be pleased to color me cynical, but I tend to follow the money in almost any dispute. The proponents of AGW/Climate Change/ have generally been noted for a suspicious use of junk science in the pursuit of economic advantage.

    BarSinister (664312)

  14. Interesting. In the Sandusky discussion, I asked what would thew response be to a scandal involving a major academic. Would it be that the whole department or institution would be somehow penalized, as was the Penn State students, their football team, and local economy, or would the consequences be aimed at the individuals responsible and financial losses “natural consequences” of loss of funding, rather than added on penalties.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  15. I’m a little concerned about the denigration of lawsuits over online defamation, as if anything posted on a blog or web site should automatically be immune from such suits, and anyone seeking legal recourse for such defamation should be ridiculed and should suffer the “Streisand effect”. Defamation is a real tort, and nobody has the right to do that to anyone, whether in print or online. If someone has been defamed online they should sue, and they should be able to get a far-reaching order to have all copies of the defamatory material deleted, no matter where in the world it’s hosted. That such an effort can’t be completely successful is unfortunate, not to be applauded, let alone made the grounds for mockery.

    The response to this particular suit should not be mockery of the concept of such suits in general, but a particularised “bring it on”, exactly as NRO and CEI have responded. This suit is wrong not because online defamation is somehow good, but because truth is an absolute defense to defamation, and what Steyn and CEI wrote about Mann is true. It would be wrong to write that an honest researcher is a fraud, and if Mann were an honest researcher my sympathies would be with him, and so should everybody’s; but he isn’t, so they’re not. AGW is a perfectly plausible theory, but the data don’t support it, and Mann knowingly manipulated them to appear to do so; that’s the definition of scientific fraud and Steyn and CEI did the public a service by pointing it out.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  16. Mann must really be feeling some pressure to engage in such counter-productive threats.

    I wonder where that pressure is coming from?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  17. The last Letter to the Editor of the WSJ in response to one of their editorials was hilarious. His entire letter was “because I said so and I’m just Oh So Smart”.

    Kaisersoze (298188)

  18. SPQR,

    Mann seems to feel he is under seige.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  19. DRJ — if he hadn’t made others feel that way I might scrape up some sympathy for him. As it is, what he sent around has come around, and I snicker. Probably not good for my karma, but science is putting forth your ideas and watching others hack them to shreds.

    htom (412a17)

  20. It has been my experience/observation that many ill-conceived lawsuits are the result of outside pressure upon the egos of litigants to “protect yourself” “stand up for yourself” from people who themselves have much to gain (or lose) and are willing to fund a lawyer and PR team behind the scenes. There are so many possibilities for who these interested parties are in the Mann case that it’s hard to know where to start. But considering the timing of this announcement, a new front–the Republicans’ war on science– from Axelrod would be my first guess and right at the top of my list.

    elissa (a7d02a)

  21. #17 The last Letter to the Editor of the WSJ in response to one of their editorials was hilarious. His entire letter was “because I said so and I’m just Oh So Smart”.

    Comment by Kaisersoze — 8/27/2012 @ 9:36 am

    See the pdf files for the Mann / Mcshane /Wyner discussions

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/13/mcshane-wyner-hockey-stick-smackdown-redux/

    Mann’s response to the McShane/Wyner study that which only got to an 80% confidence level using 95 data sets that the period 1997 -2006 was the warmest in the last 1,000 years, was that the confidence level was 99% using his statistics and using only 55 data sets. Obviously, if Mann can get to a 99% confidence level in a peer reviewed response, he is certainly smarter than us.

    Joe (a00dc1)

  22. DRJ, my sympathy for Mann is unbounded. Actually, that’s a lie. My sympathy for Mann is asymptotically approaching zero.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  23. SPQR and htom,

    I think Mann has been foolish (or maybe worse) in his climate crusade. His reputation has and will pay a high price for his foolishness.

    Nevertheless I’m sympathetic in the sense we’ve all done foolish things. But it’s hard for me to feel sorry for him right now as long as he persists in attacking others for disagreeing with him.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  24. Mann-bear-pig

    Icy (9d4709)

  25. Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 7:46 am

    Amen Milhouse

    EPWJ (e83e82)

  26. It is a heavy burden that PA-State carries:
    Michael Mann, and Joe Paterno.
    It could be said that JoePa was a bit more honest in his endeavor for the University as I am unaware of any academic transgressions on his part, or of his department.
    The same cannot be said about “Professor” Mann.

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92)

  27. Yes, we have all done foolish things, but not all of us have based a career and tried to run the world on it.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  28. Sandusky rapey-raped the boys to satisfy his needs.

    Mann rapey-raped the truth to satisfy the meme.

    Icy (9d4709)

  29. Perhaps they can share a cell?

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92)

  30. 10. The assumption of Climate Science is bristlecone pine growth is temperature limited, whereas botanists seem given to thinking growth is moisture limited, especially considering their arid environs.

    Of his 55 data sets Mann ended in having one data set from Australia, a couple/three from Africa and 22 from the N. American SW, the bristlecones, to determine world wide temperature.

    McIntyre and McKitrick, on reengineering his calculations found that insertion of random noise(I believe “red”, don’t look to me for differences with “white”), generated the same hockey stick at the end. I believe it had to do with a faulty termination of the series’ sampling methodology.

    GIGO.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  31. Given what I’ve read, I’m inclined to believe the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that there would be zealots on any given issue that would stretch the truth? Al Gore comes to mind.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  32. If man, and industrialization, is causing the current spate of warm weather, what caused the MWP?
    Was it all the coal used to power the Viking Ships?

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92)

  33. It’s a plausible hypothesis, but where are the data to support it?

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  34. AD, just because nature can and often does change the climate, doesn’t mean man can’t do it, or that he hasn’t been doing it. Past climate change was caused by nature; that doesn’t mean any current change has the same cause. The hypothesis is plausible, but proving it’s another matter. Mann’s fraud is in his claim to have proved it true.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  35. Dustin, don’t neglect the organized efforts of Mann and his accomplices to damage the reputations of legitimate climate scientists and other critics by conspiring to prevent the publication of their views and to cut them off from research grants.

    Good point. They made sure that the other opinion couldn’t get published, then noted how those who are published all agree with the fraud.

    Shameless.

    Dustin (73fead)

  36. If man, and industrialization, is causing the current spate of warm weather, what caused the MWP?

    I didn’t refer to the “current spate of warm weather,” though.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif

    Also, if steroids inflated Barry Bonds’ home run stats, then what caused Babe Ruth?

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  37. Nasa… aren’t they discredited for their manipulation of data on this issue?

    Still, the fact that those with the best access to the most data had to manipulate and lie to promote manmade global warming does not prove that there isn’t any. It just strongly suggests they believe there isn’t any.

    Dustin (73fead)

  38. GISS is Hansen’s pigsty:

    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  39. You knows, Charles Ponzi sued for libel…

    And won!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi

    When a Boston financial writer suggested there was no way Ponzi could legally deliver such high returns in a short period of time, Ponzi sued for libel and won $500,000 in damages. As libel law in those days placed the burden of proof on the writer and the paper, this effectively neutralized any serious probes into his dealings for some time.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  40. I didn’t refer to the “current spate of warm weather,” though.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif

    Are these real figures, or Hansen’s fudged ones?

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  41. Still, the fact that those with the best access to the most data had to manipulate and lie to promote manmade global warming does not prove that there isn’t any. It just strongly suggests they believe there isn’t any.

    Exactly. Just as the fact that Democrats try mightily to make things easy for felons and aliens to vote, and Republicans try just as hard to stop them, doesn’t prove that both groups tend to vote Democrat; it just proves that both parties believe this to be so.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  42. NASA seem to be basking in the glory of having the rover on Mars. Not sure this is the time to be slagging them off.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  43. NASA seem to be basking in the glory of having the rover on Mars. Not sure this is the time to be slagging them off.

    Um, whyever not? Hansen is the same scumbag no matter what happens on Mars.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  44. 39. Note the uneven distribution of land and sea on your globe.

    The oceans make up 70% of the Earths surface but 70% of land surface is in northern hemisphere.

    The heat capacity of water is about 3 times that of dirt but the emissivity of water only 2/3 that of dirt or green leaves. Water holds more heat and evolves it more slowly.

    Think of the NH as the Earth’s radiator and the SH as the heat sink. Most of the Solar UV reaches the ocean and penetrates to 300M.

    So if the SH is cooling, regardless of current air temperatures, it will be cooler in the future.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  45. “NASA seem to be basking in the glory of having the rover on Mars.”

    carlitos – What happened to the glory of the Obama directed NASA muslim feel good outreach program?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  46. The thing that Michael Mann and others were trying to claim was that the only possible cause of global warming was extra carbon dioxide – that was the only factor.

    To do that they had to make the “Medieval Warm Period” and the “Little Ice Age” go away.

    That was the point of the graph.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  47. I think I’d prefer Wikipedia to US government.
    Comment by gary gulrud — 8/27/2012 @ 12:26 pm

    Depends which part of the US government. I think Senator Inhof has been very active in presenting the case against AGW, it’s just that the press never covers it.

    It’s a plausible hypothesis, but where are the data to support it?
    Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 11:46 am

    By standards set with the AGW science, it is also plausible to suggest that the moon really is made of cheese under the moon dust, they just needed to do core samples to show it, which is the real reason we haven’t gone back to the moon.
    With the temperature data we had until the mid 70’s, some of these same scientists were predicting another little ice age. Somehow, with 10-15 more years of data, they claim the earth is actually warming. Even if their methodology was correct and their sample sites were appropriate and they were open and transparent with their data, it is not plausible that you can predict global trends for a period of time akin to the blink of an eye in earth time. I think it is a preposterous idea on the surface just based on the reality of sample size in comparison to the history of the world.

    Then Mann comes up with his tree ring surrogate markers, ignoring the influence of rain, ignoring that his computer model is shown to be in error, and makes the data from that supposedly corroborate the supposed real time data from 1975 or so until 2000 or so.

    I think if there were more than 5-10% of honest thinking journalists in the world this would have been forgotten long ago, if it ever got started.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  48. The thing that Michael Mann and others were trying to claim was that the only possible cause of global warming was extra carbon dioxide – that was the only factor.

    Really?

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  49. Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 12:38 pm

    I don’t know if that is real or fudged data, but even if it is real, if you look at the scales it is a small change over a relatively small time as far as the earth goes, and putting a bigger time frame it may be clear it is nothing but a blip of noise.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  50. Inhofe is a boob.

    Oh Christ, Romney just went birther. What the hell?

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  51. Comment by carlitos — 8/27/2012 @ 12:02 pm

    Also, if steroids inflated Barry Bonds’ home run stats, then what caused Babe Ruth? </i.

    Change in the rules of baseball.

    Before Babe Ruth major league ball teams would keep on re-using baseballs. Fans actually were required to throw back baseballs that had been hot into the stands. As a ball was used more it became softer. Also, balls that were hit over the fence in fair territory but ended up foul before landing to be ruled fair, and spitballs were legal until 1921.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead-ball_era

    The end of the dead-ball era

    The dead-ball era ended suddenly. By 1921, offenses were scoring 40% more runs and hitting four times as many home runs as they had in 1918.

    The abruptness of this dramatic change has caused widespread debate among baseball historians, and there is no consensus among them regarding the cause of this transformation.[10][11] Six popular theories have been advanced:

    Changes in the ball: This theory claims that owners replaced the ball with a newer, livelier ball (sometimes referred to as the “jackrabbit” ball), presumably with the intention of boosting offense and, by extension, ticket sales. This theory has been denied by Major League Baseball.

    The yarn used to wrap the core of the ball was changed prior to the 1920 season, although testing by the United States Bureau of Standards found no difference in the physical properties of the two different types of balls.

    Outlawing of the spitball: The spitball, a very effective pitch throughout the dead-ball era, was outlawed at this time as well. This theory states that without the spitball in the pitcher’s arsenal, batters gained an advantage.

    More baseballs per game: The fatal beaning of Ray Chapman during the 1920 season led to a rule that the baseball must be replaced every time that it got dirty. With a clean ball in play at all times, players no longer had to contend with a ball that “traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and as it came over the plate, was very hard to see.”[12]

    Game-winning home runs: In 1920, Major League Baseball adopted writer Fred Lieb’s proposal that a game-winning home run with men on base be counted as a home run even if its run is not needed to win the game. Owners attempted (but failed) to eliminate the intentional walk (succeeding only in changing the rules to mandate that the catcher be within the catcher’s box when a pitch is delivered)‚ and it was decided that everything that happened in a protested game would be added to the game record. (From 1910 to 1919‚ records in protested games were excluded.)

    Babe Ruth: This theory alleges that the prolific success of Babe Ruth hitting home runs led players around the league to forsake their old methods of hitting (described above) and adopt a “free-swinging” strategy designed to hit the ball hard and with an uppercut stroke, with the intention of hitting more home runs. Critics of this theory claim that it does not account for the improvement in batting averages from 1918–1921, over which time the league average improved from .254 to .291.

    Ballpark dimensions: This theory contends that the cause of the offensive outburst was changes in the dimensions of the ballparks of the time.

    Accurate estimates of ballpark sizes of the era can be difficult to obtain, however, so there is some disagreement over whether the dimensions changed at all during this time, let alone whether the change led to an increase in offense.

    A related fact here is that a rule change enacted for the 1920 season for the first time ruled balls that were hit over the fence in fair territory but ended up foul before landing to be ruled fair, and home runs, rather than foul balls. This rule change greatly pleased hitters for both New York City teams,[citation needed] who had had many “hooking” home runs called foul in the Polo Grounds.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  52. Comment by carlitos — 8/27/2012 @ 12:55 pm

    Yes. For one thing they discounted the effect of the sun and ignored changes in solar energy output over time. I believe if one looked at sun spot activity the supposed warming of the Earth trended along with the warming of Mars and the moon Titan, IIRC, which trended with Sun spots.

    All of the Earth existing in space with a multitude of variables, and they want to assume and then prove it has to do with concentrations of CO2, a relatively weak greenhouse gas at relatively low concentrations.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  53. We can read Wackoffpedia for ourselves, Sammy. YoyP***is not available.

    nk (875f57)

  54. That was a rhetorical question, but thanks for the reading material. White Sox are still in first.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  55. Comment by carlitos — 8/27/2012 @ 12:58 pm

    Oh Christ, Romney just went birther. What the hell?

    He didn’t really, he just played around with it a little bit.

    He said, nobody has to ask for it – they know who he is. Well, his father was Governor of Michigan for a while.

    You know, I don’t think his father, George Romney, born in Mexico in 1907, even had a birth certificate!

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  56. Making a joke is going Birther?

    JD (318f81)

  57. I thought it was tasteless. YMMV.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  58. I don’t know why Inhof is a boob, but even if he is, the experts he has testify at Congressional hearings don’t seem to be. Of course, then again, the math they show is so far beyond me I couldn’t tell if it was correct or not, but they are supposedly the experts and with it printed for all to see I think someone would have refuted it and we would have heard about it if they did. I have work to do.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  59. MD, the AGW hypothesis doesn’t come from observations, it comes from our theoretical knowledge of what CO2 and other such gases ought to do to an atmosphere, all else being equal. The hypothesis is sound, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t seem to be supported by the data, so Hansen, Mann, etc. decided to fudge the data to show what they know ought to be there. It’s rather like a cop faking evidence because he knows the suspect is guilty, and the public will be in danger if he’s released, so he supplies evidence to replace that which the fiend has somehow managed to hide or suppress.

    Of course all else is not equal, and known effects can be too small to have a meaningful impact on the real world. Consider the Coriolis effect, as it manifests itself on the scale of a toilet bowl. It doesn’t. Despite what cartoonists and others insist, toilets in the northern and southern hemispheres don’t flush in opposite directions. Not because there’s something wrong with the theory; the Coriolis effect is real, but it’s so weak that on the scale of a toilet it’s completely overwhelmed by random other factors. The same may well be true about the “greenhouse effect”.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  60. carlitos,

    Both the Instapundit and Ann Althouse agreed that Romney’s comments weren’t about birtherism, and I agree with them.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  61. SF: The thing that Michael Mann and others were trying to claim was that the only possible cause of global warming was extra carbon dioxide – that was the only factor.

    Comment by carlitos — 8/27/2012 @ 12:55 pm

    Really?

    He does admit natural oscillations but the whole point of the hockey stick was to deny any other possible cause of what’s going on now:

    http://voicesweb.org/node/3671

    Since my work on the “Hockey Stick”, indicating that recent warming is unusual in the context of at least the past millennium — was featured in the 2001 summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it has been a favorite object of attack by climate change deniers.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  62. This is the article that Michael Mann called defamatory:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/309442/football-and-hockey-mark-steyn

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  63. Hi DRJ,

    I hadn’t read other pundits’ take on this, but I’m happy to disagree with Mr. Reynolds and Ms. Althouse on this. I just watched the video. It sounded to me like he’s just playing to the base, a significant percentage of whom believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. I just shake my head when I hear stuff like this.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  64. If not, it was about the rose fertifilizer over his tax records.

    But just because I’m going to vote for him, does not mean my opinion of him is higher than Leviticus’s.

    nk (875f57)

  65. Oh Christ, Romney just went birther. What the hell?

    What are you talking about? That line was perfect. And, I’m sure, perfectly rehearsed. (I’m in Michigan at the moment, and would have gone to that rally had it been held at a more convenient hour. I don’t do early mornings, especially on vacation.)

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  66. I guess Michael Mann wants to say the Penn State investigation of him wasn’t fake.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  67. Scott and Ann, notwithstanding.

    nk (875f57)

  68. Some morons, on Al Gore’s internets, want Romney to counterattack Romney’s tax records nonsense with Obama’s fake college records. Romney’s business if he thinks the birth certificate question strikes a stronger chord.

    nk (875f57)

  69. Before Babe Ruth major league ball teams would keep on re-using baseballs. Fans actually were required to throw back baseballs that had been hot into the stands. As a ball was used more it became softer. […]
    More baseballs per game: The fatal beaning of Ray Chapman during the 1920 season led to a rule that the baseball must be replaced every time that it got dirty. With a clean ball in play at all times, players no longer had to contend with a ball that “traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and as it came over the plate, was very hard to see.”[12]

    Oh. That would certainly change the game. In cricket, the state of the ball is very much part of the game, and there are clear rules about when it should be replaced. When it goes into the stands it must be returned. Game tactics depend on its state; when it’s new it lends itself to fast bowling, while when it’s worn a bit it goes to the spin bowlers. And players are always trying to polish the ball, but must take care not to deliberately scratch it (or at least not to be caught doing so)

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  70. I thought it was tasteless. YMMV.

    It does. Very much.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  71. MD, the AGW hypothesis doesn’t come from observations, it comes from our theoretical knowledge of what CO2 and other such gases ought to do to an atmosphere, all else being equal.

    At some point in time somebody observed that supposedly the temperature of the earth was increasing in a more of less steady, ongoing way. At some point in time someone observed that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing.

    After those observations were made, I assume somebody made the giant leap to assume one could account for the observed temp rise (if real and consistent and something new in the history of the earth) with the rise in CO2 and CO2 alone, caused by man-made combustion.

    Even theoretical science is based on some observation somewhere, otherwise it isn’t science, it is science fiction and speculation.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  72. Michael Mann did succeed in getting two sentences removed from the following:

    http://www.openmarket.org/2012/07/13/the-other-scandal-in-unhappy-valley/

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  73. Dang, I wish I $100m in throw-away money. “Zerobama”, born in Hawaia, claims Kenya, for sure Indonesia? Is he African? Is he American? We know he ate dog, to most people that’s a no-no. Is he Amerindian?”

    nk (875f57)

  74. Birthers or not, I would be interested in Obama’s answer to why his book publicist said he was born in Kenya and persisted in that claim for a number of years.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  75. :/

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  76. One interesting point that I don’t know if anyone has considered is that the potent greenhouse gas is di-hydrogen monoxide (but it also cools the planet when it condenses into clouds)

    And it is not only CO2 that’s been emitted into the atmosphere, it’s also H2O.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  77. Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 1:25 pm

    He would likely claim it doesn’t matter, that what matters is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for.
    But for the record, he is not from Nazareth or Bethlehem (at least I’ve never seen it claimed).

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  78. A comment on the openmarket.org blog:

    rblackbird July 15, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    Thank you for making this point public.

    When I first heard about the Sandusky coverup, I was not surprised, having studied the coverup of the Mann episode. As you suggest, a reasonable inference from the Mann investigation is that it was manipulated by senior faculty to protect one of their own and to keep the money tap open.

    I followed the Mann investigation through the preliminary report. At that point, I have [sic – should be gave] up. The woeful process convinced me that an honest answer was not the object of the inquiry; getting rid of the complaint was.

    The committee was under the strict control of the chairman, who impressed me as having a mission to protect Mann and PSU. The first thing he did was dismiss the university’s general counsel from the investigation. This reminded me of the comment in Shakespeare’s Henry the Sixth, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (The point was that the lawyers would interfere with a conspiracy to set up one Jack Cade as king.)

    I read the preliminary report as a retired trial lawyer who cross-examined many “expert witnesses” in trials, including scientists and engineers. A lawyer would have demanded a more objective review, and would have examined the evidence critically. A good lawyer would have demanded that independent, outside experts advise the committee.

    One of the most egregious decisions the committee made was to GIVE Mann the questions in writing they would ask of him later. This happened after the first session, as I recall.

    This was really stupid, if the committee wanted to complete an honest, objective investigation.

    By giving Mann the questions, there would be (and was) no surprise, and Mann could (and did) prepare answers that were accepted whole hog.

    No independent outside experts were asked to review Mann’s comments and work.

    As I recall, none of the several other faculty members on the panel had any significant credentials demonstrating expertise with the scientific issues. Whether they said or did anything is unclear. I suspect they realized they would suffer some punishment if they failed to toe the company line. It is a problem many academics have discussed.

    Mr. Freeh, a former federal district judge as well as former FBI chief, accuses the highest officers of PSU of covering up Sandusky’s crimes and ongoing predations for many years. Deceit was an operating principles of the PSU administration. Covering up Mann’s problems does not seem far fetched.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  79. Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 8/27/2012 @ 1:27 pm

    Just because dihydrogen monoxide is much more prevalent in the atmosphere, much more potent as a greenhouse gas, and typically correlates to some degree with rainfall, which makes plants grow, there is no reason to consider it, just like the sun.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  80. “By standards set with the AGW science, it is also plausible to suggest that the moon really is made of cheese under the moon dust, they just needed to do core samples to show it, which is the real reason we haven’t gone back to the moon.”

    MD in Philly – I thought we went to the moon because of the Transformers and didn’t need to go back. Maybe that recent movie I saw about it was fiction. Thanks for the heads up.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  81. Hey, MD,

    When the baby was born, some white coats told us there was a scale of 1-10, our baby got nine, but no baby got above nine so not to worry. Ten was a star over Bethlehem.

    nk (875f57)

  82. Sammy,

    Please, please provide links rather than enormous cut & paste jobs.
    If you have a small paragraph to cut & paste, that’s reasonable, but you continually cut & paste doctoral theses and novels as long as “War and Peace” and it costs Patterico money to pay for the bandwidth, and it’s murder on everyone’s eyes.

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  83. Comment by MD in Philly — 8/27/2012 @ 1:25 pm

    Birthers or not, I would be interested in Obama’s answer to why his book publicist said he was born in Kenya and persisted in that claim for a number of years.

    I don’t know if he ever gave an answer. That stayed on the literary agent’s website until after Obama had started running for President. It was changed or removed in the spring of 2007.

    That same web page claimed that Obama’s father had been was Minister of Finance in Kenya, IIRC.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  84. Hi back at you, carlitos,

    It’s certainly fine for us to disagree on this but do you you really believe a “significant percentage” of the GOP base believes that “Mr. Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya”?

    I’m part of the GOP base and I live in a very conservative area, and only a handful of the conservatives I know believe Obama was born in Kenya. My guess is that Michigan Republicans aren’t as conservative as the folks in my area and thus they would be even less likely to believe the birtherism claims.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  85. At some point in time somebody observed that supposedly the temperature of the earth was increasing in a more of less steady, ongoing way. At some point in time someone observed that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing.

    After those observations were made, I assume somebody made the giant leap to assume one could account for the observed temp rise (if real and consistent and something new in the history of the earth) with the rise in CO2 and CO2 alone, caused by man-made combustion.

    No, that is not what happened. The greenhouse theory was propounded decades before there was any warming. In fact I seem to recall it dates from the late 19th century, when the earth was still climbing out of the Little Ice Age. It was purely hypothetical until the 1980s.

    Even theoretical science is based on some observation somewhere, otherwise it isn’t science, it is science fiction and speculation.

    Wrong again. Theory comes first, observation and possible confirmation or refutation later. Theories have to make predictions, not just fit what’s already known. The Big Bang theory, for instance, was not a way to explain the 3°K background radiation; the later discovery of the background radiation confirmed the theory, which until then had been pure speculation.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  86. Do you wonder about “of Nazareth” and “the Nazarene”, BTW?

    nk (875f57)

  87. http://dhmo.org/

    Educate yourselves!

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  88. MD,

    Perhaps the publisher thought claiming Obama was born in Kenya would make him sound more exotic and thus help the book sell better and/or get it more publicity.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  89. Maybe that recent movie I saw about it was fiction. Thanks for the heads up.
    Comment by daleyrocks — 8/27/2012 @ 1:31 pm

    I just don’t know anymore, daley. I would like to say I’ll wait to read the book, but then I don’t know which of the books to read.

    I’m sure the little offspring of nk was a delight to all… and even had a birth certificate filled out to document the occasion!

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  90. Birthers or not, I would be interested in Obama’s answer to why his book publicist said he was born in Kenya and persisted in that claim for a number of years.

    Puffery. Since when does anybody believe anything they read in blurbs? Blurbs aren’t expected to be true. Being born in a third world country made his proposed book (which he never got around to writing) more saleable, so they wrote that he was.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  91. Milhouse,

    My understanding is that scientists use theories and observations to come up with hypothetical answers, i.e., with an hypothesis. Then they test their hypothesis with observations and experiments.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  92. Do you wonder about “of Nazareth” and “the Nazarene”, BTW?

    Sorry, could you unpack that please?

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  93. It’s certainly fine for us to disagree on this but do you you really believe a “significant percentage” of the GOP base believes that “Mr. Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya”?

    I’m part of the GOP base and I live in a very conservative area, and only a handful of the conservatives I know believe Obama was born in Kenya. My guess is that Michigan Republicans aren’t as conservative as the folks in my area and thus they would be even less likely to believe the birtherism claims.

    Comment by DRJ — 8/27/2012 @ 1:33 pm

    Well, I am admittedly sensitive on this issue, which I believe stems from racism. I find the issue itself to be irrational and paranoid.

    I have anecdotal evidence from my Facebook. Not very quantitative.

    Here are the numbers I was thinking of. (Note – from US News and World Report, not exactly a bastion of liberal thought)

    According to PPP’s survey, 51 percent of likely 2012 GOP primary voters believe that President Obama was born in another country (which would make him ineligible for the presidency). Another 21 percent say they are “not sure” if the president was born in the United States. Or to put it another way, 72 percent of the people who will be choosing the next Republican presidential nominee are either birthers or birther-curious.

    A mere 28 percent of the GOP primary electorate responded, correctly, that the president is a natural-born American citizen.

    There was a Gallup Poll that said 18% of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim.

    So, I was using a little hyperbole, but not much. I drove past that silly “Where’s the Birth Certificate” billboard for a long time. The

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  94. Video of Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller tearing apart Michael Mann’s work.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk

    “What they did is they took the data from 1961 onward and they erased the data”

    It’s unreliable they said because we know the temperature is going up and they replaced the data with something else and they smoothed it.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  95. carlitos – You can buy a birther coffee mug on Obama’s campaign website!

    But Mitt Romney, who has repeatedly said he believes Obama was born in the U.S., can’t joke about his own birth certificate w/o the humorless Obamamedia and Racist Industrial Complex going batsh*t.

    We have seen this before.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  96. My understanding is that scientists use theories and observations to come up with hypothetical answers, i.e., with an hypothesis. Then they test their hypothesis with observations and experiments.

    Sometimes a hypothesis is inspired by an attempt to explain existing observations, especially when some previously accepted explanation has proven to be inadequate; it must then be confirmed by new observations that were not available when it was formulated. And sometimes it’s inspired by something completely different. The point, though, is that it has to come before the observations, not after them.

    The greenhouse hypothesis predicted that if humans kept pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, eventually it would heat up. Much later, the warming of the ’80s and ’90s was seized upon as confirmation of this old hypothesis. Then further observations came in, and suddenly it didn’t look so hot [pun intended], but by this time many people’s careers were invested in it so they had to keep it going by any means possible.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  97. Sorry, could you unpack that please?

    Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 1:39 pm

    Sorry, Milhouse, it’s kind of a book-reading thing.

    nk (875f57)

  98. “Well, I am admittedly sensitive on this issue”

    carlitos – Not to worry, nobody has noticed.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  99. daley, you’re probably right regarding the media, but it gave me the chills when I heard the crowd cheering.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  100. carlitos – Not to worry, nobody has noticed.

    Comment by daleyrocks — 8/27/2012 @ 1:49 pm

    🙂

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  101. Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 1:33 pm
    Some of this is getting off the point and futile, and I’m not sure why the effort is being put in to be argumentative.

    I remember reading in the newspaper in the mid 70’s that the earth was cooling. There was an accompanying graph that showed how the high temps of the late 20’s and early 30’s had not been repeated and the temp curve was downhill.

    That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I may confabulate at times, I may forget things at times. But this is not one of them.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  102. I think Obama is basically a person not forced into religion by his parents, not any of the five, who nonetheless discussed all, any, and non, with him. Like my first wife and I do with our daughter.

    nk (875f57)

  103. Temperatures have not gone up in a straight line.

    That would imply there are several factors affecting it, and if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is one of them, it’s not completely disproportionate.

    What really gets ridiculous is the remedy: simply don’t do it.

    Although the accumulation of carbon dioxide is something the entire world has contributed to since at least about 1860.

    Although there are things that could cool the planet, if that was thought desirable. to wit: spraying sulfur dioxide in the arctic or seeding the southern oceans with iron. Much better ideas than attempting to NOT do what’s been done.

    Or just simply adapt.

    The proposed limits would just delay the arrival of carbon dioxide levels of X ppm by a few years.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  104. 95. And Muller is a long time advocate of AGW, although he had a smarmy article out a year ago about being a skeptic that was featured in the NYT.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  105. 95. And Muller is a long time advocate of AGW, although he had a smarmy article out a year ago about being a skeptic that was featured in the NYT.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  106. daley, you’re probably right regarding the media, but it gave me the chills when I heard the crowd cheering.

    The crowd cheered because it was funny. And it was funny because it was guaranteed to make some people’s heads explode.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  107. 102. the earth was cooling. this was probably because of nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere.

    A similar idea was behind “nuclear winter”

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  108. Proof by “I remember reading in the newspaper.” Cool. Works for Rush Limbaugh, I guess.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  109. I’m not sure why the effort is being put in to be argumentative.

    You’re the one who seems to be putting in that effort.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  110. I remember reading in the newspaper in the mid 70′s that the earth was cooling. There was an accompanying graph that showed how the high temps of the late 20′s and early 30′s had not been repeated and the temp curve was downhill.

    Yes, I’m sure you saw it. I did too. I don’t see how it’s relevant. Did you think the greenhouse theory was invented after that? Or, for that matter, that it was widely accepted by actual scientists?

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  111. 88. Open your HS Chem text and lookup Hansen’s Law. It says the solubility of CO2 in water is inversely proportional to temperature.

    Note also that its a phase diagram. At extreme pressure in the presence of calium and other bases it precipitates out of solution as a solid.

    The Oceans contain 50,000 times the CO2 as that of the Atmosphere. CO2 lags temperature by roughly 8 centuries. So with the little Ice Age ending by Columbus a rise today in Atmospheric CO2 is expected.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  112. “daley, you’re probably right regarding the media, but it gave me the chills when I heard the crowd cheering.

    The crowd cheered because it was funny. And it was funny because it was guaranteed to make some people’s heads explode.”

    I agree 100% except for the chills, given the Seamus on the car roof, Mormon Cancer Death Stare, felon, tax cheat, etc., etc., thrown Romney’s direction. The blatant double standards are astounding.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  113. Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 1:55 pm

    And it was funny because it was guaranteed to make some people’s heads explode

    It was unfair.

    Is it hsi fault few people knew who he was.

    Although one of them was Neil Abercrombie, now governor of Hawaii.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Abercrombie

    He arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, a month after statehood in September 1959 to study at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where he earned a master’s degree in sociology and later a doctorate in American Studies.[3] At the university he befriended and attended classes with the parents of President Barack Obama, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr.[4]

    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729685-2,00.html

    His parents met because they were both studying Russian.

    Neil Abercrombie was among those most irritated by this birtherism and didn’t understand why Obama didn’t take care of that before.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  114. According to my daughter’s 4th grade science class, the scientific method consists of the following steps:
    1. Ask a question
    2. Make a hypothesis
    3. Plan an Experiment
    4. Perform an Experiment
    5. Analyze Data
    6. Draw Conclusions
    7. Share the information with others.

    The Big Bang theory, for instance, was not a way to explain the 3°K background radiation; the later discovery of the background radiation confirmed the theory, which until then had been pure speculation.

    The original observation is “We are here. There is a material universe.” The question is, “How did the universe come about?” Hypotheses are made (“theories” in your terms) on whether the universe has always been here or whether it had a beginning. At this point experiments are planned, predicting what kind of further observations would be consistent (confirms is typically too strong of a word here) with the theory and what observations would not be consistent with the theory as proposed.

    I’m not sure why we are doing this, I’m not sure what your point is, I’m not sure why you are trying to tell me what the scientific method is when I graduated with honors from one of the best biochemistry programs in the country, years ago though it was.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  115. On my web browser, post 88 is my link to the spoof site dhmo.org.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  116. Mormon Cancer Death Stare

    I googled that and it didn’t help.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  117. Puffery. Since when does anybody believe anything they read in blurbs? Blurbs aren’t expected to be true. Being born in a third world country made his proposed book (which he never got around to writing) more saleable, so they wrote that he was.
    Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 1:36 pm

    I guess Crichton should come into play. If a (^%^&%&Y(*^*&%*& book cover can’t be honest about where an author was born, unless it is a known work of fiction, why the h— would I want to bother reading the d— book!!??!!??

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  118. Carlitos, I know there is nothing I can say or do to prove I am not a racist SOB who doesn’t like Obama because he is black.

    But I know when I go to bed at night and when I get up in the morning, it is his ideas and his behavior that I don’t like, same with Sotomayor. I have a friend of 25+ years named Sonia. I told her I would have been happy if she, and not the other Sonia, was the wise Latina/ Puerto Rican/ Hispanic/ Spanish speaker with light brown skin that was nominated for Supreme Court.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  119. Is it hsi fault few people knew who he was.

    It’s definitely his fault that he didn’t release the birth certificate as soon as anyone asked for it. And that he still won’t release anything else. He’s so secretive that the obvious conclusion is that he’s hiding something, and the obvious result is speculation as to what it might be; if he isn’t in fact hiding anything then the speculation is all his fault.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  120. The Oceans contain 50,000 times the CO2 as that of the Atmosphere. CO2 lags temperature by roughly 8 centuries. So with the little Ice Age ending by Columbus a rise today in Atmospheric CO2 is expected.
    Comment by gary gulrud — 8/27/2012 @ 2:00 pm

    Way too simple, direct, substantiated with fact, and most of all, non-sensational and apolitical.
    P, where do you get such readers? 😉

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  121. I’m not sure why we are doing this,

    You tell me. You’re the one who insists that the greenhouse effect (AGW, “climate change”, etc.) was an attempt to explain the warming in the ’80s and ’90s, and that it’s not a plausible idea. It’s much older than that, and it’s a perfectly plausible idea, but the data so far don’t seem to confirm it. Either there’s something wrong with it, or it’s true but so small that it’s overwhelmed by other factors.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  122. Hi MD,

    Even if Romney is appealing to racists, that doesn’t make you a racist. Just so we’re clear.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  123. Mormon Cancer Death Stare

    I googled that and it didn’t help.

    It’s how he gave that woman cancer, several years after her husband lost his job.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  124. Milhouse, the “greenhouse effect” may discuss factors that cause warming, and it may or mat not have existed since 10,000 BC for all I know.

    In my experience and reading (other than you) I have never seen any allusion to global warming, especially man-made, as being in the public consciousness prior to the 80’s and 90’s. Whether somebody proposed it long ago, like many other things may have been proposed long ago, I am not sure has any bearing on the claims of current AGW proponents.

    As far as atomic and hydrogen bomb experiments causing global cooling, I thought Krakatoa was larger than any of those, perhaps even larger than all combined.

    Maybe it was all of the CO2 from burning cities in WW II.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  125. Comment by carlitos — 8/27/2012 @ 2:21 pm

    Thank you for the vote of confidence.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  126. “It’s how he gave that woman cancer, several years after her husband lost his job.”

    carlitos – Milhouse is correct. From the ad put together by the PAC about GST Steel which the Obama campaign dishonestly claimed they did not know the details of even though the produced video of the same man and story twice earlier in the year.

    Don’t forget the abominable forced haircut scandal either, Rafalca, false claims of outsourcing jobs, claims that Romney ads on Obama’s unilateral welfare waivers are false because they have been debunked by democrat pundits (we declared ourselves innocent!).

    But wait, there’s more!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  127. In my experience and reading (other than you) I have never seen any allusion to global warming, especially man-made, as being in the public consciousness prior to the 80′s and 90′s.

    Scientific theories do not depend on the public consciousness. The public doesn’t get its information from scientific journals. The greenhouse effect didn’t become popular by accident; it was a concerted effort by somebody, though I’ve seen different theories about who was responsible and why, including Margaret Thatcher.

    As far as atomic and hydrogen bomb experiments causing global cooling, I thought Krakatoa was larger than any of those, perhaps even larger than all combined.

    And indeed it caused a year without summer.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  128. “Nuclear winter” didn’t become popular in the early ’80s by accident either; in that case there’s no need to speculate about what caused it to become the theory du jour, because the USSR’s fingerprints were all over it.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  129. Scientific theories do not depend on the public consciousness.

    Certainly true, but the importance of AGW is not as a scientific theory discussed in scientific journals, but as a public policy concern and political issue with vast economic consequences, all of which are dependent on the opinion of the public.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  130. Don’t forget the abominable forced haircut scandal either,
    Comment by daleyrocks — 8/27/2012 @ 2:50 pm

    I had forgotten about it!!!! Oh dear me. thanks for reminding me!!

    I need to get something done now. really, I do.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  131. Everyone knows that The Babe’s success was due to copious quantities of beer and hot-dogs, and a lack of sleep from all the partying.

    BTW, AGW is a crock.
    Mother Nature said so.

    But, seriously, I fall back on the thoughts of Dixie Lee Ray, who once commented to (Rush Limbaugh?) that if Man set out to destroy the Earth, he’d fail because he does not possess that amount of power.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixy_Lee_Ray

    This piece of rock is over 4-Billion Years old, and Man has only been around for maybe a million of those years, and only learned to use indoor-plumbing in the last two-centuries; and you’re going to tell me that we have the capability to destroy this rock, and all that live upon it?
    I don’t think so!

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92)

  132. the importance of AGW is not as a scientific theory discussed in scientific journals, but as a public policy concern and political issue with vast economic consequences, all of which are dependent on the opinion of the public.

    This entire discussion is happening because you insisted on challenging my statement that AGW is a perfectly plausible theory that just hasn’t been borne out by the facts. You are the one who keeps bringing up irrelevant arguments to support your challenge. Whether a theory is plausible has nothing at all to do with the public consciousness or politics or anything but the known laws of science. And this theory complies, as far as it goes, with those laws. But in the ’80s and ’90s the reported facts seemed to confirm it, and the anti-industrial political movement seized on it and publicised it, as they will do to any theory that looks like it might help them advance their political goals. And scientists like Mann, who at first probably thought the data did confirm it, eventually found that they didn’t; at that point they should have announced that their earlier conclusions were no longer valid, but they didn’t want to do that so they started fudging, hoping that later discoveries would eventually confirm what they were convinced was true. But those later discoveries have yet to be made.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  133. carlitos,

    Your link is convincing but wasn’t that poll from early 2011, when birtherism was at its height? At that point, I believe that Obama had been encouraging the birther controversy — arguably to make Republicans and especially the Tea Party look extreme — until he finally released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011. It’s just my opinion but I don’t think the polls would show the same thing now.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  134. You are the one who keeps bringing up irrelevant arguments to support your challenge. Whether a theory is plausible has nothing at all to do with the public consciousness or politics or anything but the known laws of science.

    The science is not done in a vacuum. It needs funding by sources that are affected by public sentiment. Lots of theories are “plausible” by various standards, not all are equally plausible nor are all worthy of significant attention by funding agencies or the government or the public perception that empowers the government.

    If you can show me where Mann and others were researching based on theories of the 1800’s before there was measured increase temperature in the 80’s and 90’s I would be greatly swayed to see things from your perspective.

    The observations which raise the question can CO2 made by man cause a significant rise in the earth’s temperature are minimal in the context of the history of the earth and the “theoretical” considerations. Theoretical considerations should take into account the effects of the earth’s external heat source, the sun, and the knowledge as Gary has noted that there is a much larger amount of CO2 in the ocean than in the air, and as earth temperature rises and ocean temperature rises a small amount, the CO2 goes up as a consequence.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  135. DRJ – fair enough. I’m just disappointed that we have to have this conversation about birth certificates with the first black president. There are zillions of legitimate issues to discuss, and this isn’t one of them.

    As for % of birthers / “obama is a secret muslim” believers – Numbers would probably be lower now. Could you agree that there is still a significant minority of birthers amongst Republicans and TEA Partiers? If it was north of 70% in the primaries, maybe it’s 25% or so now?

    I dread the idea of Donald Trump bringing this issue back to light during the RNC.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  136. I believe the issue is the interaction of science and the history of science. You think the theory/hypothesis that man made CO2 could significantly effect the earth’s temperature was a theory that existed and was being put to observational “experiment” prior to the data of the 80’s and 90’s. Whether the hypothesis existed prior to the 80’s or not, my understanding is that there was not much active observation and promotion of the concept until the data from the 80’s.

    The articles in the 70’s about global cooling were not made up by reporters, but came from scientists such as from NASA, I believe, and if they were conscious of the greenhouse theory, they clearly felt any effect it had was overshadowed by other forces.

    My view is that the data that became available in the 80’s and 90’s, all in all, is a very small piece of information to consider among the many things that effect the planet, and the concept of AGW being “established science” and of significant amount to be of concern and that it is a problem we in the US can do something about are all overblown.

    Gary, others?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  137. CO2 is a trailing indicator.
    The Earth gets warmer, then atmospheric CO2 increases as it is released from warming ocean water.
    This is shown by ice-cores dug from the Greenland Ice-Cap, and Antarctica.
    Mann’s, and Jones’, theories would stand up if they were all standing on their heads, because they’ve got it upside-down.

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92)

  138. carlitos:

    If it was north of 70% in the primaries, maybe it’s 25% or so now?

    I really don’t know but if you include people who aren’t convinced one way or the other, probably so.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  139. For those interested:

    A very brief survey of a Google search on “history of global warming theory” gives opinion ranging from active concern starting in the 50’s and 60’s to the “real start” of concern in 1988 and the heat records set that summer in the US. In between are the efforts in the UK and Margaret Thatcher, claimed by some to have been politically motivated (promote more enthusiasm for nuclear energy and punish striking coal minors).

    A similar very brief survey of the results of a Google search on “New Ice Age Scare” gave a mixed opinion as to how much of the scare at the time was in the lay press vs. scientific papers. The concern at the time was based on observations of cooling since the 30’s and theory concerning the roles of particulate pollution and sulfur dioxide. The lay press articles noted were far more numerous than scientific articles, but the lay press articles were based on the opinions of respected scientists of the era.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  140. “I’ve just completed Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”
    They had the real measured numbers for more recent years. They didn’t have to make any assumptions at all. That was the “trick”.

    Enough of this for me. You’re outdoing yourselves in stupidity.
    Have a blast.

    sleeeepy (b5f718)

  141. “I had forgotten about it!!!! Oh dear me. thanks for reminding me!!”

    MD in Philly – We’re facing another trillion dollar budget deficit.

    Medicaid is going bankrupt.

    Government debt is about to climb over $16 trillion.

    Conventionally measured unemployment is 8.3% while real unemployment is significantly higher.

    We are in the worst recovery in 70 years.

    BUT SOMEBODY TOLD A JOKE ABOUT A BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!!!!!!!!

    The horror. The horror.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  142. sleeeeepy is a climate change truther?

    Who’da thunk it?

    Icy (9d4709)

  143. BUT SOMEBODY TOLD A JOKE ABOUT A BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!!!!!!!!
    The horror. The horror.

    Comment by daleyrocks — 8/27/2012 @ 4:57 pm

    Did you know that apparently in some states a birth certificate isn’t a birth certificate? Yeah, you just write in the names of the people you want to be responsible for the child. My first grandchild is going to have Bill Gates and Steve Jobs listed.

    A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon that adds up to real money and we become the most western territory in Europe that needs bailing out by Germany and France.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  144. NASA seem to be basking in the glory of having the rover on Mars. Not sure this is the time to be slagging them off.

    Comment by carlitos

    I agree that the organization has accomplished something to be proud of. I’m proud of them. I want them to apply this spirit of excellence and honest scientific pursuit to global warming. They have fallen far, far short of their high ideals and best example in this case. I don’t overlook the good they do when I call a spade a spade.

    Dustin (73fead)

  145. Obama pays tribute to Neil Armstrong, the only way he knows how…

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/149576/

    Colonel Haiku (763f9e)

  146. MD in Philly – I am asking Patterico to delete your comment #144 because it included those two words, the ones that start with the letters “b” and “c” because everybody knows what you are really referring to.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  147. Obama pays tribute to Neil Armstrong, the only way he knows how…

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/149576/

    Comment by Colonel Haiku — 8/27/2012

    If the onion has posted that, I’d think it was too over the top. Obama and his staff lack self awareness.

    Everyone: check out his link. Hilarious, but sad.

    Dustin (73fead)

  148. Wrong thread, MD.

    And there’s something called a paternity suit.

    And “you” do not fill in the names. Some hospital administrator fills it in, and two doctors sign it. The way doctors sign a death certificate without having seen a dead body. In some states.

    nk (875f57)

  149. MD,

    I have said before that a birth certificate certifies a live birth. Not parentage.

    And a cerificate of live birth is challengeable. Otherwise, I could pay two doctors to write that I gave birth to President Obama’s baby.

    Birth certificates are first face evidence but no more than that.

    nk (875f57)

  150. You really an MD?

    nk (875f57)

  151. nk, asking MD if he’s really a doc because of a lapse on birth certificates would be like me asking if you’re really a lawyer because you were ignorant of an aspect of admiralty law or the default commercial code contract provisions in Louisiana.

    Dustin (73fead)

  152. I seem to know more medicine, protocols, and medical documenting than you do.

    nk (875f57)

  153. Birth cerificates and death certificates are not a specialty, Dustin. They are routine, in every licensing jurisdiction.

    nk (875f57)

  154. I went out with a lady with a hair like the sun and skin like milk who worked in Vital Statistics in our university hospital. We talked a little between Biology classes.

    nk (875f57)

  155. birth certificates are not medicine.

    That lady sounds interesting. You should have been a writer, nk, and I don’t mean legal briefs.

    Dustin (73fead)

  156. 137. Indeed Hansen was part of the ‘Global Cooling’ flap spurred by a turn down in temperatures in the ’60s. By the ’80s temps were peaking. In ’82 in LaCrosse, WI we had a July with one high below 90 degrees and three days above 100.

    Hansen, courtesy of Gore, addressed the Senate in ’88 I believe and the AGW ball was rolling.

    I think Foucault found CO2 absorbed radiant heat in mid-1800s, Arrhenius suggested that burning fuel could affect global temps in 1898. Callendar and Keeling developed and popularized the theory in the ’40s and ’50s among academics.

    They dispensed with volumetric measurments of CO2 in the Atmosphere and enshrined optical measurement, especially at Mauna Loa. They also arbitrarily set the partial pressure at 190 ppm, that of the gas bubbles in deep ice cores.

    Volumetric analysis had found the average over the prior century rather higher, 270-330 ppm. In fact following the great volcanism at the opening of the century, Mayon, Tambora, et al., the concentration peaked above 460 ppm in the 1820s and following.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  157. 151. I’ll vouch for him nk, got a prob with that?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  158. 156. nk is a true Renaissance Man, seriously.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  159. Another arcana of Climate Science is worth mentioning along with Beer’s Law, treated earlier, and that is the Suess Effect.

    This fellow tried to give explanation for a source of error in radiocarbon dating in which fossil fuels, depleted in C13 & C14 would reduce the normal fraction in the Atmosphere, as plants prefer the C12 isotope.

    Climate Science supposed therefore that they thus had a reinforcing measure of anthropogenic change, a steadily diminishing fraction of C13.

    A number of problems however are ingored. CO2 is not well mixed in air being heavier, ISI satellites confirm this, warm oceans heavily modifiy CO2 concentrations, the Solar Cycle can change the amount of C14 created by 50% for a century or more, and while coal is certainly of organic origin, oil and gas are another matter. Brazil is currently drilling oil 12 miles down, and Mexico’s deposits are in a meteor-shocked substrate.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  160. None of the climate skeptics deny that there is a greenhouse effect in physics. The problem is that the AGW proponents do not rely upon the greenhouse effect for their predictions. The AGW theory relies upon “forcings” – interactions from the small increase in temps directly caused by CO2 concentrations – that multiply the effects. The multiples that these forcings represent are wildly divergent even among the various models used by AGW proponents. And skeptics believe that there are countervailing effects in the global set of interactions.

    This is why the accusation by AGW proponents that skeptics are denying basic physics is a lie. And an intentional one at that.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  161. birth certificates are not medicine.
    I said that before. They are secretary.

    That lady sounds interesting.
    Thirty-five years too late for you to meet her.

    You should have been a writer, nk, and I don’t mean legal briefs.
    Many people have said that. Some whose opinions I respect.

    Comment by Dustin — 8/27/2012 @ 6:28 pm

    nk (875f57)

  162. 156. nk is a true Renaissance Man, seriously.

    Comment by gary gulrud — 8/27/2012 @ 7:00 pm

    Born again? Nope. Not me. Too Buddhist.

    nk (875f57)

  163. Time magazine had several cover stories in the 1970s about the threat of global cooling and how we were headed for an ice age. I remember them. Here’s a couple.

    Global warming from time.

    Tanny O'Haley (12193c)

  164. The crackpot global cooling global warming climate change advocates will just have to face the fact that a hundred years from now, people will still be listening to the Dean Martin/Marilyn Maxwell version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
    …and it still will be cold outside during the winter months.

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  165. first, somebody else brought up birth certificates and I took the opportunity to do more (attempted) humor with a cross reference.

    the previous discussion on the will and “birth” certificates and being told that the parents listed were not necessarily the actual parents confused my brain. All I know is that every birth certificate I ever saw (mine and my children’s, don’t deliver babies) listed the child and the mom and the dad, not a man referred to as mom who had nothing to do with the child’s biology.

    Death certificates are actually more difficult to fill out correctly than you may think, we had a lecture on it the last year of med school, the last minute “every thing you need to know that we haven’t told you before” class.

    Besides, one gets good at what you practice at. Hopefully the only docs that get a lot of practice with death certificates are autopsy pathologists.

    It’s like filling out ICD codes for billing- whoever made that up was as counter-intuitive and as non-medical as one can be.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  166. They had the real measured numbers for more recent years. They didn’t have to make any assumptions at all. That was the “trick”.

    No, the trick was to graft the actual temperatures onto the tree ring proxy data set in recent years. This produced a hybrid line pointing upward, when the unadulturated data would have produced a line that sloped down at the end.

    Here’s Climate Audit’s description of the trick:

    “When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions ‘diverge’ from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to ‘pad’ the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards . . .”

    Why was this done? According to NYT columnist John Tierney, it was to make a chart for a report on the dangers of climate change, and the chart had to show all the indicators pointing up to be effective.

    “Most of the graph was based on analyses of tree rings and other ‘proxy’ records like ice cores and lake sediments. These indirect measurements indicated that temperatures declined in the middle of the millennium and then rose in the first half of the 20th century, which jibes with other records. But the tree-ring analyses don’t reveal a sharp warming in the late 20th century — in fact, they show a decline in temperatures, contradicting what has been directly measured with thermometers.

    “Because they considered that recent decline to be spurious, Dr. Jones and his colleagues removed it from part of the graph and used direct thermometer readings instead. In a statement last week, Dr. Jones said there was nothing nefarious in what they had done, because the problems with the tree-ring data had been openly identified earlier and were known to experts.

    But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.”

    Bolded emphasis mine. While the real numbers are available in the documents, few of the journos or policy makers actually read them closely enough to spot the contradiction. They just look at the scary charts.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (907fc4)

  167. and it still will be cold outside during the winter months.

    Unless we luck out and do get some global warming, whether from anthropogenic causes or from boosted solar activity or whatever it was that caused the Medieval Warm Period. That would be wonderful, it it were to happen, but unfortunately there’s no indication as of now that it will.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  168. In all fairness to Hansen, my brief looking into it gives the claim that Hansen’s computer modeling program was used, but he disclaimed actually being involved in the work.
    But it was too much he said-he said for me to wade through to a conclusion.

    the Solar Cycle can change the amount of C14 created by 50% for a century or more, and while coal is certainly of organic origin, oil and gas are another matter. Brazil is currently drilling oil 12 miles down, and Mexico’s deposits are in a meteor-shocked substrate.
    Comment by gary gulrud

    Interesting, so some C14 is actively being generated through natural processes? Never thought of it that way.

    I’ve heard and read rumors about whether oil and natural gas really are the result of piles of decomposed once living stuff, but never enough to get a clue as to what they were talking about.

    What do (did) they teach in schools these (those) days?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  169. “But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.”

    Exactly. Their excuse when it came out was that it was “just for a graphic” that was of no scientific importance, so it didn’t have to be accurate. But that graphic was precisely what the opinion-makers and policy-makers saw, and were led to believe was an accurate representation of the data, and it wasn’t.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  170. Please do not try to fool me, MD.

    I have done murder cases.

    We need a living person who died.

    On the death certificate, the attending doctor signed death and cause of death. Another doctor signed I see a dead person. Are you in a different place?

    nk (875f57)

  171. MD in Philly, my recollection is that all C14 is created from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays interact with nitrogen atoms to create C14. The cosmic ray rate of impact with Earth varies greatly by both the amount created in our stellar neighborhood and by the strength of the earth’s magnetic field.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  172. MD, there’s no need to be “fair” to Hansen; he’s a dangerous person. He flew out to the UK to testify for some people who broke in to a power plant and vandalised it; he told the court that these criminals shouldn’t be convicted because they were saving humanity from extinction, or some such thing, and they should be released and encouraged to keep committing these crimes.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  173. SPQR, Yes, and it was recently discovered that cosmic rays also play a major role in the Earth’s climate — something that none of the models even attempted to take into account, because they always assumed it was negligible.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  174. Cosmic rays can also cause disk crashes.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  175. Comment by Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. — 8/27/2012 @ 8:22 pm

    Thank you for that nice and tidy explanation. Sometimes phrases are assumed to be something they’re not, and “trick” could be a scientist’s way of describing “a really brilliant idea that I didn’t think of”, in all fairness**. But your explanation makes perfect sense. Using data from different methodologies to get the results you want where and when you want is significant fudging of the data.

    **I forget the actual details, but there was an example of this concerning a note by Tony Blair or someone about Iraq and WMD’s or such. A word was used that had a meaning to a Brit very different from how some journalists took it to mean, hence claims of dishonesty, etc.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  176. I need three more packages of tin foil. Shoot! They no longer make tin foil! It’s nine packages of aluminum foil.

    nk (875f57)

  177. They were known as the Downing Street memos, and the meme they used was the intelligence was being
    ‘fixed’, it actually showed how weak intelligence product is among the Cousin agencies

    narciso (ee31f1)

  178. MD, you’re talking about the memo that spoke of a decision having been taken, and therefore they now needed to fix the data around it. Meaning to nail down, set in place, marshall. Not, as in a peculiar American slang usage, to alter.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  179. On the death certificate, the attending doctor signed death and cause of death. Another doctor signed I see a dead person. Are you in a different place?
    Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 8:27 pm

    Cause of death. Is it “cardiac arrest”, is it “heart attack”, is it arrhythmia secondary to heart attack?
    Is it “stab wound”, hypovolemic shock secondary to a stab wound, is it cardiac arrest secondary to hypovolemic shock?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  180. Random fooled me. MD in Philly fooled me much longer. Stupidity. Humiliation

    nk (875f57)

  181. Ultimately, isn’t every death “cardiac arrest” ?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  182. What’s your specialty, MD, and are you still practicing?

    nk (875f57)

  183. Ultimately, isn’t every death “cardiac arrest” ?

    I see you’ve read Between Planets!

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  184. Comment by narciso — 8/27/2012 @ 8:36 pm
    Comment by Milhouse — 8/27/2012 @ 8:38 pm

    Thank you, that was it. But what the heck am I doing here when people have memories like that. I think I’ll just go home mow.
    Wait, I am at home.

    dag, once upon a time I thought there was the big bang and elements were created and the isotopes were what they were and they decayed over time to give us what we have now, except for suns/stars which are like hydrogen bombs but really aren’t at all like hydrogen bombs after all.

    And most of the stuff in the universe is dark matter that can’t be seen. That’s gravitas for you.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  185. Ultimately, isn’t every death “cardiac arrest” ?

    Comment by SPQR — 8/27/2012 @ 8:40 pm

    Yes, and

    “Is it “cardiac arrest”, is it “heart attack”, is it arrhythmia secondary to heart attack? Is it “stab wound”, hypovolemic shock secondary to a stab wound, is it cardiac arrest secondary to hypovolemic shock?

    are not acceptable.

    What is your specialty, MD?

    nk (875f57)

  186. MD, here‘s WP’s explanation of how most (but not all) C-14 in our atmosphere originates.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  187. I apologize, MD.

    nk (875f57)

  188. Random fooled me. MD in Philly fooled me much longer. Stupidity. Humiliation
    Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 8:38 pm

    Fooled you how?

    Ultimately, isn’t every death “cardiac arrest” ?
    Comment by SPQR — 8/27/2012 @ 8:40 pm

    Yes, which is why that is not a good answer on a death certificate, though many are filled out that way.

    What’s your specialty, MD, and are you still practicing?
    Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 8:42 pm

    My residency was in Family Medicine. As history had it, residency in the mid 80’s meant HIV. My practice was always heavily slanted towards adults, mainly “inner city”, lots of people dealing with addiction. Lots of HIV, Hep C, mental health issues, did lots of home visits for various reasons.
    No, haven’t been practicing for several years.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  189. Shut up, Milhouse. Just f-word shut you dirty little >>>>>>>

    nk (875f57)

  190. These threads are so weird lately.

    I remember when I was the blog’s curmudgeon.

    Dustin (73fead)

  191. I went to bed mean, and I woke up meaner, eighteen hours later. I have already said my apologies. (Actually, I don’t remember the last time I slept in a bed It’s just a figure of speech for sleeping.)

    nk (875f57)


  192. I apologize, MD.

    Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 8:48 pm

    No apology necessary.
    Besides, I’m still trying to figure out what Dustin meant by “legal briefs”. Are those some kind of underwear especially for lawyers?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  193. The word is centripetal, Dustin. Look it up, not necessarily on wikipedia. To save you time,

    Hurts the eyes:

    http://www.artofeurope.com/yeats/yea11.htm

    nk (875f57)

  194. nk, I don’t think you owe any apology. I just think we all assume a lot of other professions. I bet MD is asked medical questions that are far outside his area of expertise practically every day. I imagine most lawyers are asked for free legal advice on wills and car loans and a million other things they can’t answer effectively without a lot of research. It’s just the way people rely on the idea of a professional.

    MD, legal briefs are what strippers are required to wear in Alabama.

    Dustin (73fead)

  195. MD, legal briefs are what strippers are required to wear in Alabama.
    Comment by Dustin — 8/27/2012 @ 9:02 pm

    If I knew how to make a face of a totally flummoxed person laughing hysterically I would.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  196. Besides, I’m still trying to figure out what Dustin meant by “legal briefs”. Are those some kind of underwear especially for lawyers?

    Comment by MD in Philly — 8/27/2012 @ 8:58 pm

    It’s in the Illinois Supreme Court Rules: Briefs need not be typed.

    Dustin,

    Don’t talk for other people.

    nk (875f57)

  197. Dustin,

    Don’t talk for other people.

    I thought you knew by now that I do so for my own amusement.

    Dustin (73fead)

  198. I am getting confused as to what is sarcasm and humor and what is not.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  199. Shut up, Milhouse. Just f-word shut you dirty little >>>>>>>

    Excuse me? να λάβει μια μεγάλη βόλτα από μια σύντομη προβλήτα, if Google got that right.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  200. How about just talking around the village fountain (no, the women do that) shooting the bull at the bar, MD? Does it have to make sense, does it have to be kind?

    nk (875f57)

  201. Nope, Milhouse, Google translator fooled you, it’s

    Παρε μια βολτα σε ενα βολτιμο κουλουρι,

    if you meant to say “take a run at a rolling donut”.

    nk (875f57)

  202. 191. “I remember when I was the blog’s curmudgeon.”

    Shut up! You, never.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  203. Fine, I’ll say it in English then: Go take a long walk off a short pier.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  204. I’m surprised,

    It worked for me,

    Όχι με τον προστάτη μου,

    not with my prostate [condition].

    nk (875f57)

  205. Παρε μια βολτα απω κοντη αποβραθρα

    nk (875f57)

  206. I don’t care about your prostate. If you’re joking I don’t get it. Just FOAD.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  207. Let Paul Ryan take you for a stroll in the mountain air.

    Milhouse (8acf6a)

  208. Παρε μια βολτα απω κοντη αποβραθρα

    is the faithful translation. But as the poet’s wife told me, the faithful wife is the good wife, and the faithful translation is the bad translation. Go with,

    Αη, γαμησου.

    nk (875f57)

  209. Go ____ yourself.

    nk (875f57)

  210. Google translator interprets words and basic phrases. It fools people who do not know the language. Do not trust it.

    nk (875f57)

  211. I wish Sammy would post a novella about Wiley Coyote or something just to really complete the thread.

    Dustin (73fead)

  212. Does it have to make sense, does it have to be kind?
    Comment by nk — 8/27/2012 @ 9:17 pm

    No and no, but I like to know when it’s not making sense and when it is kind or not. I have enough trouble when I think I know what’s going on, let alone when I don’t. G’ night.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  213. Dustin

    🙂

    EPWJ (d84fb0)

  214. Comment by DRJ — 8/27/2012 @ 1:35 pm

    Perhaps the publisher thought claiming Obama was born in Kenya would make him sound more exotic and thus help the book sell better and/or get it more publicity.

    t wasn’t the publisher – it was the literary agent. But the same idea applies. I think the woman who wrote that actually didn’t have that many facts about the authors she was describing but she went ahead anyway or maybe didn’t have much choice except to say she can’t do it She was, of course, trying to make the authors, or potential authors, sound more interesting.

    She had a minor job at the time although now she’s running the agency. (Source: what I remember of some newspaper story I read)

    Barack Obama never wrote that book she was selling (or rather, finally sold, if I remember correctly) It was supposed to be some sort of general philosophizing about race and something else.

    Instead he wrote a different book – a memoir, that wasn’t really true about his thinking as he grew up, and conflated a lot of facts.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  215. 212. Kinda sorta done.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  216. I don’t know much about Wile E. Coyote – he’s a fictional cartoon character, but I don’t know if I saw him.

    This is Wikipedia about this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_Road_Runner

    There were only 48 cartoons made that featured him.

    Wikipedia has separate articles for each cartoon:

    Like this one:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solid_Tin_Coyote

    This isnotable as being the only one where Wile E. Coyote actually captures the Road Runner. (but he escapes)

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  217. Heh. A guy who can take a joke can’t be all bad.

    Dustin (73fead)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1669 secs.