We may be about to finally find out, though I expect them to continue to stonewall: a judge has ordered the University of Virginia to release the climate research materials And Michael Mann is his usual smarmy, ad-hominem self:
“I think its very unfortunate that fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers … continue to harass U.Va., NASA, and other leading academic and scientific institutions with these frivolous attacks,” he said.
Hey, if I’m funded by the fossil-fuel industry, where the hell is my check?
I’ve been holding your check for my latest private jet payment.
In science (that is, actual science) the raw data is made available to others as a matter of course. Mann is a fraud.
Missing leading “ht” on link.
What ever happened to the scandal where the climate data couldn’t be reproduced? Why is it these things seem to just drop off the face of the earth?
/sarc
That data has already cost us billions of dollars. I think we have earned the right to take a peek.
It was the real-estate driven Global Recession that changed my mind about renewable energy. I used to think that the variability of wind and solar could somehow average out over the grid, but just as a lot of high-risk mortages didn’t all average out but failed all at once, renewable energy without any breakthrough in energy storage is the same thing as high risk/near useless electric power.
Well in a way it is the same kind of thing will change political opinions with the Scott Walker initiatives and the Paul Ryan budget.
The conventional wisdom is that Scott Walker, instead of being the vanguard of the Conservative/Libertarian revolution is instead tipping his hand as to what life is like when the voters turn over the Governor, State Senate, and Assembly to one party. The conventional wisdom is that unlike Scott Walker, Paul Ryan is only part of a governing party in one house of Congress, with the US Senate and the Presidency controlled by the opposition. What Paul Ryan is doing is only generating political heat without generating any movement forward, but combined with the Scott Walker thing of what activist Conservative government looks like (as opposed to the much freer spending “Compassionate Conservatism” of the Bushes), this combination is pretty much blowing the political capital of Mr. Obama’s November 2010 “shellacking” to no good effect. In six months time.
The not-conventional wisdom is that the budgetary drain of public employees, their pensions, and their unions, the budgetary drain of retired people drawing Medicare (and Medicaid when they deplete their savings and are supported in nursing homes), that those matters have reached “a tipping point” (sound familiar) from which there is a “point of no return with accelerating consequences and impending disaster in the face of doing nothing” (sound even more familiar?). In the face of an existential crisis, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are or will become heroes as more people see the light of how bad things are.
What I am saying is these things all go in cycles. No, we are not at a climate tipping point because the “up” is the up of a natural cycle. Likewise we are not at an old-age entitlement program tipping point because unlike other trading partner nations, the U.S. has substantial population growth, and this worry about entitlements goes in cycles.
So go ahead, tell me I am wrong, um, that climate does not go in cycles? There is no comparison to the Climate worries to the impending debt crisis worries?
“Hey, if I’m funded by the fossil-fuel industry, where the hell is my check?”
I guess they’ll say we unpaid skeptics are “usefuel idiots.”
God will punish me for this post, I’m sure.
impending disaster in the face of doing nothing
If we did nothing we wouldn’t have a debt problem. The problem is that both parties want to cut taxes and increase spending, and if either gets their way we will have a debt problem.
the U.S. has substantial population growth, and this worry about entitlements goes in cycles.
You are a fucking idiot. Our population growth is a result of our immigration policies. Period. To suggest that our entitlements can continue to grow at the current rate based on our population growth is to completely ignore reality. Your next “cycle” will not be what you think it is.
Jim Says:
May 26th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Jim, you win. I’ve never seen anyone be so wrong in so few words. The errors and omissions in that article are legion. I don’t have to mention them because any sane person that reads it will immediately recognize them.
Jim, there’s a problem with your linked article. It says:
Take it from the number crunchers at the CBO.
Once again, an argument crosses the line from factual to farce by depending on the CBO for its numbers. Do you ever learn from experience? There’s a really good reason we don’t use the CBO for arguing budgetary matters. That reason is that the CBO has to assume whatever it’s instructed to assume. End result is garbage in, garbage out.
There’s a really good reason we don’t use the CBO for arguing budgetary matters.
Both parties in Congress, the White House, and the various debt and deficit commissions all do; the CBO is the gold standard for fiscal debates in Washington.
Is there a non-partisan budgetary projection of the effect of leaving fiscal laws unchanged for the next decade that you would consider superior?
That reason is that the CBO has to assume whatever it’s instructed to assume.
The projection pointed to is not based on anyone’s instruction, it’s based on current law as written.
The bubblin’ crude isn’t half as fossilized as the people running our energy policy.
Jim Says:
May 26th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
…” the CBO is the gold standard for fiscal debates in Washington.”
Oh, no, no, no. Karl is quite right. The CBO is effectively a vehicle for justifying what the Congressional leadership wants to do. If they don’t get the answer they want, they just constrain the assumptions the CBO is allowed to use so as to eliminate the undesired outcome of the analysis.
Both parties in Congress, the White House, and the various debt and deficit commissions all do; the CBO is the gold standard for fiscal debates in Washington.
“Gold standard.” What a remarkable abuse of the term. I and others have explained why this term is inappropriate. I treat the CBO as an adversarial agent, like a lawyer in a trial. If the CBO admits something which is detrimental to the powers currently in Congress, then it is likely to be true or even worse than claimed by the CBO, just like a lawyer in a trial affirming evidence which hurts the interests of his client.
In Jim’s link, a writer depends on CBO numbers to claim that the budget will balance itself without any intervention. Anyone with knowledge of how the CBO operates would understand why that article failed. I can’t imagine why Jim would waste our time with such drivel, except perhaps as part of a Republican false flag operation. All I can say is that the big three expenditures, Social Security, Medicare, and defense aren’t heading in the right direction for a balanced budget to occur. And revenue continues to be far below the fantasy expectations from the CBO.