environment: corporate irresponsibility Koch Brothers Richard Muller
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 5: All Muller, All The Time
The Houston Chronicle, running an AP article on the newest DFH tree-hugging enviro-nazi:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.
The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.
Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.
What’s different, and why everyone from opinion columnists to cable TV ‘s satirical”The Daily Show” is paying attention is who is behind the study.
I’m getting more material out of Muller than I got from the Deepwater Horizon. I wonder what that means. Sent Nov. 1:
It’s a little confusing to hear Richard Muller confirming the data and conclusions of previous researchers in climate science, while simultaneously asserting that there “…was not enough skepticism” shown in their work. What he seems to be saying is that the scientists whose work he previously doubted didn’t doubt their work enough at the time, but now that he’s figured out they were right all along, everything’s okay. Or something like that.
But that’s not what really matters. What really matters is that Muller, whose work was significantly funded by arch-conservative climate-change deniers, applied scientific method and intellectual rigor to the problem — and came to the conclusion that the world’s atmosphere is getting warmer. The Koch brothers must be seething; conservatives don’t like surprises.
For his part, Dr. Muller is going to discover what life is like when the petroleum funding evaporates. Welcome, sir, to the ninety-nine percent!
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility Richard Muller scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 4: Paraphrasing WHO?
Dr. Richard Muller continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, this time with an opinion piece in the Midland (MI) Daily News:
Richard Muller has been quoted by climate skeptics the world over as one of the leading authorities on why we should not take the climate science behind global warming on its face.
This past week, a study that took Muller two years to complete, concluded that climate scientists are right about one thing: The land is 1.6 degrees warmer than it was in the 1950s.
Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, conducted the study by focusing in on two chief criticisms of the skeptics — that weather stations are unreliable and that cities, which create heat islands, skew results.
“The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller said in a telephone interview. “And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias.”
How often do I get to evoke Don Rumsfeld? Sent on Halloween:
Stop the presses! A scientist confirms other scientists’ results!
Of course, science is supposed to work like that, with constant checking and cross-checking leading to ever-more-accurate descriptions and analyses of the world. Dr. Richard Muller’s readiness to change his mind when confronted with irrefutable proof of climate change’s factuality is simple responsibility to the norms of his profession.
In a sane world, this wouldn’t be news.
Unfortunately, ours is not a sane world, but one where billionaires push ideologically-driven distortions of the scientific process, politicians are the captives of corporate interests, our media promotes a false equivalency between petro-funded contrarians and genuinely worried climatologists — and the best interests of the American people are betrayed. In a sane world, we’d have started addressing the dangers of climate change long ago. But as Donald Rumsfeld might say, we live in the world we’ve got, not the world we wish we had.
It’s crazy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republicans Richar Muller scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 3: A Truffle!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution runs another article on Muller’s epiphany:
WASHINGTON — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.
The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.
Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
Notice that this guy was fooled by “Climategate.” He wasn’t paying too much attention, I guess. Sent on October 30:
Richard Muller’s capacity for intellectual integrity will cost him dearly among those who’ve used his earlier stances to bolster their rabid denial of climate change. After an exhaustive study partially funded by two arch-denialist billionaires, he’s concluded that all the other researchers on the issue were right: the earth’s atmosphere is warming. Perhaps in his subsequent research, he’ll tackle the question of whether human beings are responsible for the burgeoning greenhouse effect that is triggering extreme weather all over the planet — and eventually come around to the conclusion already shared by the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists: human civilization is indeed the driving force behind global warming. In the meantime, Dr. Muller is about to learn that his erstwhile sponsors couldn’t care less for scientific integrity; the Koch brothers and their political allies in the GOP only support skepticism when they stand to benefit from it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Mitt Romney
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 2: Is Being An Opportunistic Hypocrite Genetic, Or A Lifestyle Choice?
The Wall Street Journal notes that the Mittster has been inconsistent on climate change. Heh heh heh heh.
Rivals of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday repeated their accusations of flip-flopping on core issues, after he told an audience on Thursday that he didn’t know what caused global warming.
Mr. Romney said earlier this year that human activity played a role.
“Mitt Romney’s positions change, often dramatically, depending on the audience or location,” said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also a GOP candidate. “Voters need to consider the fact that Romney, in one week, changed positions on man-made global warming, capping carbon emissions and Ohio’s efforts to curb union powers.”
It took me longer than I expected to write this letter, given that it was essentially a rephrasing of yesterday’s. Sent October 29:
Having learned early on that an inadvertent bit of truth-telling can deep-six a politician’s aspirations, Mitt Romney should know never to question conservative shibboleths.
Young Willard Romney was only 20 when he watched his father’s 1968 presidential run spin out of control when George Romney spoke of being “brainwashed” by advocates of the Vietnam war. While history has vindicated the Michigan Republican’s apostasy on our Southeast Asian misadventure, primary voters at the time rejected him soundly. So it is today, with the conservative base unified in its absolute denial of climate change.
Like father, like son. Historians will undoubtedly recognize Romney the Younger’s timid statement on global warming as a piece of truth-telling uncannily similar to that which sank Romney the Elder’s presidential run. Anti-science Republican absolutists will never acknowledge climate change, and Mitt’s subsequent equivocations may not be enough to undo the damage done by his brief flirtation with the truth.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots Mitt Romney Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 1: Please Lie To Me!
The former governor of my state is a soulless sociopath with the intellectual depth of a life-size Ken doll. The Boston Globe for October 28:
Is Mitt Romney tweaking his position on global warming?
The former Massachusetts governor had been one of the few Republican presidential candidates to embrace the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change. But in a speech in Pittsburgh on Thursday, he sounded like more of a skeptic.
“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet,” Romney said in the speech, a clip of which was posted by the liberal blog Think Progress. “And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”
Romney gave a different answer in June, when he was asked whether humans contribute to climate change.
“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course,” Romney said at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. “But I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”
I wrote a similar letter to the Globe years ago, and they published it. Maybe this one will work, too. Sent October 28:
Mitt Romney learned a valuable political lesson from his father’s experience: don’t tell the truth if you can help it.
Returning from a 1967 visit to Vietnam, George Romney remarked that his earlier support for the Vietnam War was the result of “brainwashing” by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, and the ensuing storm of bad publicity ran his presidential campaign into a ditch.
While the light of history shows that the elder Romney was telling the truth, that didn’t help him with the Republican electorate, then as now acutely sensitive to any flouting of its shibboleths. Romney the younger’s acknowledgment of climate change is a similar misstep; it’s gratifying that our erstwhile governor has taken his father’s experience to heart and is now walking back his heretical stance on scientific expertise.
Mitt’s finally figured it out: when it comes to wooing GOP primary voters, facts are best left unaddressed.
Warren Senders