Behind the ellipses

Here's an interesting little exercise in forensics showing how far climate denializers — in this case, one of the fearless leaders, Steve McIntyre — will go to confirm their biases: selectively edit out correspondence to make it look as though the correspondents are talking about one thing, when replacing the excised portions make it clear they're talking about something completely different.

McIntyre provides fodder for skeptics

(Not overly technical, but assumes some familiarity with the nuts and bolts and nut and bolt proxies of the so-called "Climategate" "scandal." Even so, it's well worth a look if only to take the poll.)

I did notice that McIntyre mentioned the decline in tree-ring widths on CNN. But he never corrects all the others who blather about "hiding the decline" in temperature.

Apparently, this is about all they have left. Which is not to say that they had anything to begin with. Yet only recently, they'd unearthed "massive fraud," and the pants-wetting histrionics (a necessary feature of the scientific method) were virtually imperturbable.

Still waiting for the leading local denializers Patrick McIlheran and Richard Esenberg to register their righteous offense at these obvious examples of intellectual dishonesty. It took Patrick McIlheran two whole weeks to figure out that "hide the decline" was not a reference to a decline in measured temperatures, so it could be a while.

As in, never.

See also: Hackers aimed to maximize harm to Copenhagen summit

Whodathunkit.

Scores of presumed readers

This is how creationists do science.

On the other hand, please vote in favor of my review: "Sterling example of mendacious intellectual pornography from Stephen Meyer."

The comments are hilarious. It's been how many years since the "Wedge Document," yet they're still stuck in Phase II, "Do publicity" (without ever once having satisfied Phase I, "Do science").

Baroness Thatcher is a conservative heroine, no?

To be sure, no denializer, she.

h/t lord_sidcup.

Dispiriting but not surprising

Greg Sargent is disappointed at how popular was Sarah Palin's "Climategate" WaPo op-ed, which was filled with idiotic lies.

Such is life, Greg. Think of it this way: The composer of the piano quartets K.478 and K.493 was tossed in an unmarked, pauper's grave, while the guy who plays the bass guitar in U2 lives in a fucking castle.

Plus, I'm sure a lot of those hits were for laughs, which is why we watch Sean Hannity. And train wrecks.

More troubles for Galileo

Hey, remember Patrick J. Michaels, the "climate skeptic" who compares favorably with Galileo? Here's a compendium of interesting (albeit a bit technical) reading from a couple years back.

Pat Michaels: "Fraud, pure and simple"

I'm sure our local denializers Patrick McIlheran and Richard Esenberg will be falling over themselves to register their profound concerns.

Any minute now ...

So let me get this straight

A famous and apparently widely admired person, the "Purpose Driven Pastor" Rick Warren, who claims to follow and represent The Lord and Saviour on Earth, has to be "pressured" by the media to condemn Uganda's official plans to execute homosexuals.

Because when they asked Pastor Rick Warren about it before, he said oh no, it's simply not appropriate to comment on some other country's internal affairs.

Is that about the size of it?

What's especially ghastly is how much he looks like Jerry Falwell.

Butler, J., dissents (opinion filed)

Bill Lueders — Justice for Forest Shomberg

Remember him? Because I do.

The defense in this matter was that someone other than the defendant committed these offenses, and that Shomberg was mistakenly identified as the perpetrator. Relying on established scientific research, the expert testimony that he sought to introduce would have addressed factors that have a significant bearing on a witness's ability to identify a stranger, as well as explained how these factors impact the accuracy of a witness's recollection. Notwithstanding the cross-examination of the eyewitnesses and jury instructions, expert testimony would still have assisted the trier of fact. This testimony would certainly have had a tendency to make the existence of each witness's identification of Shomberg as the perpetrator less probable than it would have been without it, and therefore relevant to his innocence.

State v. Forest Shomberg, 2006 WI 9, 72 (Butler, J., dissenting).

"The people of Wisconsin deserve better." — F. James Sensenbrenner

Ol' F. James is not right about much, now is he.

Decisions, decisions

Denializer must choose between ignorance and dishonesty

Apparently Willis Eschenbach's chicanery really spooked Megan McArdle and some duffer at the Volokh Conspiracy. Golly gee.

And: Death threats. What is it they say ... "stay classy."

Prof. Esenberg remains in climate denial denial

Combining two different measurements and pretending they are the same thing and mischaracterizing what data show has not been limited to tree ring data. — Prof. Richard Esenberg

Sure sounds like a pretty devastating indictment, don't it.

Only problem is, that is not at all what was done.

Page 2 of 12:

"Front cover: Northern Hemisphere temperatures were reconstructed for the past 1000 years (up to 1999) using palaeoclimatic records (tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc.), along with historical and long instrumental records. The data are shown as 50-year smoothed differences from the 1961–1990 normal. Uncertainties are greater in the early part of the millennium (see page 4 for further information). For more details, readers are referred to the PAGES newsletter (Vol. 7, No. 1: March 1999, also available at http://www.pages.unibe.ch) and the National Geophysical Data Center (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov)."

Page 4 of 12:

"Our knowledge of pre-20th century temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere has increased dramatically in recent years. The availability of natural archives of past temperature such as tree rings, banded corals, ice cores and lake sediments, in addition to historical and long instrumental records, has enabled [Northern Hemisphere] temperature variations to be reconstructed for the last 1000 years at an annual resolution. It is not yet possible to do the same for the Southern Hemisphere due to the lack of adequate palaeoclimatic records. Despite their different emphases on annual or extended summer seasonal temperatures and their different geographical biases, all the reconstructions (shown on the front cover as 50-year smoothed differences from the 1961–1990 normal) indicate that against the background of the millenium as a whole, the 20th century was unusually warm."

Emphases added.

The only person pretending and mischaracterizing here is Prof. Esenberg. Why he chooses these hills to die on is anybody's guess.

Jim Sensenbrenner funnies

I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do and our lunar, our rovers on Mars have indicated that there has been a slight warming in the atmosphere of Mars and that certainly was not caused by the internal combustion engine.

— Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Concours Motors)

There have been claims that warming on Mars and Pluto are proof that the recent warming on Earth is caused by an increase in solar activity, and not by greenhouse gases. But we can say with certainty that, even if Mars, Pluto or any other planets have warmed in recent years, it is not due to changes in solar activity.

The Sun's energy output has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978.

— New Scientist

Never mind that. What counts is Sensenbrenner's "personal belief."

Congressprimate Sensenbrenner (R-Cabela's) is correct, however, that the Mars Rover has no small-block V8 under the hood.

And now we’re going to see a metaphorical shootout, on the high ground of twenty-first-century atmospheric physics, between the likes of Inhofe-Barton-Boehner-Sensenbrenner & Co. and Hansen-Schmidt-Lacis-Chu-Holdren-Karl etc. on the issue of the radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases?

There are some highly amusing clips of a news conference featuring Sensenbrenner and Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, at the link.

McIlheran funnies

Reliable sources:

Dad29 notes what a little extra carbon will do for crops ...
P. McIlheran, 12/07/09

None of the original data exists anymore ...
Dad29, 11/29/09

Yes the data exists.
Dad29, 12/07/09

Seriously. "Dad29" is apparently some guy with a modem* in a basement in Brookfield. Patrick McIlheran is a member of the editorial board at the biggest daily newspaper in Wisconsin.

He tells us he's a journalist.

* The anti-science contingent finds atomic theory convenient enough, despite never having observed an electron or a muon neutrino.

Palin, victim of e-mail hack, lauds e-mail hack

But doesn't understand them either.

I don't think conservatives realize how much they're damaging their credibility* — such as it is — through their efforts in this "climategate" affair. They depend on ignorance and lies to gain political power.

It's grotesque.

* At the same time, they've managed to lower the bar of credibility itself, to where all it means is, "an attribute of not lying."

Fox News hides the decline

Genius.

Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation

The legendary tractatus at long last emerges:*

I think it is not a coincidence that people who are atheists or evolutionists frequently have a wicked lifestyle or at least a lifestyle against the plain teachings of the Bible. Therefore, evolution is an easy way for them to justify their lifestyle. The problem is one of philosophy, not one of science. They don't want there to be a God because of their wicked lifestyle. That is their real problem.

Follow the logic.

One hundred and two pages of similarly vacuous effluvia (.pdf).

I think they still show Hovind's "creation science" videos to this day on WVCY, a Milwaukee teevee station.

* Hovind himself doesn't emerge until 2015.

When will Patrick McIlheran stop lying?

Ever? I see McIlheran made "Jerk of the Week" in the Shepherd Express today. Indubitably, there was none more deserving.

Rep. Sensenbrenner is every bit the embarrassment.

Richard Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.

Harper's

More comic BS from McIlheran

Patrick McIlheran, the only fully credentialed dendroclimatologist on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, his "climategate" "journalism" since revealed as an embarrassing bust, retreats to more comfortable, familiar territory today, comparing science to a totalitarian regime and portraying scientists as totalitarian actors.

Well, in the sense that physical laws and observations impel the science, science is a totalitarian regime. Where totalitarianism is defined as "subordination of the individual to the state," so is science "subordination of the theory to the fact."

It must be noted here that in that latter sense, Patrick McIlheran's own failures are frequently spectacular. (And, wouldn't you just know it, yet another follows presently.)

But of course that is not the impression McIlheran, who doesn't know the difference between an instrument and a proxy temperature measurement, is hoping to convey. Rather, it's McIlheran's literary equivalent of daubing a portrait of Obama with a Hitler moustache.

Indeed, the WSJ op-ed that is the object of McIlheran's ardor is decorated with a photo of V.I. Lenin and invokes "Stalinism."

And, typically, McIlheran's most compelling sources of "journalism" contain laughable errors of fact. This one jumps out:

Never mind that none of these scenarios has any basis in some kind of observable reality (sea levels around the Maldives have been stable for decades) ...

The latter claim originates with the peculiar ravings of one Nils Axel-Morner, a retired Swedish seismologist better known for advertising the effectiveness of — get ready for this — dowsing.

And if you go here, then you can read all about Nils Axel-Morner's fraud and incompetence along with the debunking of the WSJ author's clueless pronouncement, upon which his "argument" is premised.

As is clearly demonstrated, it's not for no good reasons that serious people dismiss crackpots for what they are: crackpots.

Wouldn't a "journalist" want to know that? Yes, I think so.

Remarkably, this is the garbage an actual member of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board is feeding its readers. Why?

About those "declining" temperatures

You know, the "hidden" ones:

The Met Office also confirmed today that the first decade of this century has been by far the warmest decade on record. New figures released in Copenhagen show that — while 1998 was the warmest individual year — the last ten years have been the warmest period in the 160-year-old record of global surface temperatures.

The Met Office said that the figures show that the world continues to see global temperatures rise and demonstrates that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed.

In a separate announcement, the World Meteorological Organization said that 2009 is expected to become the fifth warmest year on record.

So, why are leading conservative Republican figureheads lying?

This has been a public service from the U.S. Department of Rhetorical Questions

Guess the speaker

"The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests [FALSE],* manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures [COMICALLY FALSE], and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming [FALSE]."

Tough one, I know. Could be almost any Republican.

* Here is Keith Briffa, who compiled probably the most contentious data implicated in the entire "Climategate" "scandal," sharing his tree ring series around with people he doesn't know from Adam.

In Copenhagen, curiously well-informed

Sounds almost like a ... conspiracy

The other thing that continues to muddy the picture is the unabated journalistic interest in the email story, and the apparent acceptance that its outbreak, mere weeks before the climate conference, was somehow a coincidence. When the story broke and people like Marc Morano* from the denial site ClimateDepot.com and Myron Ebell** from the Competitive Enterprise Institute offered themselves out for instant interviews, no one asked how these curiously well-informed commentators came to know so much about the stolen emails — or whether they knew anything about how they came to be public. No one seems to have asked the Cato Institute's oil-soaked Pat Michaels*** how he was ready with his money quote ("This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.") when the New York Times' Andrew Revkin called for a reaction.

Richard Littlemore.

* A Milwaukee Tea Party academic fellow of distinction. Another Milwaukee tea festival ceremonialist was Willie Soon.

** "His main job is to provide material to the media in the form of quotes to newspaper reporters and participation in live interviews on the subject of climate change. He also digs out countervailing facts from the scientific literature that can be used by other pundits."

In other words, the quote-miner in chief.

*** The Galileo of Our Times.

Not so fast, McIlheran

I've just completed P-Mac's fact-trick to hide the plurality.

On a theory of reality being subordinate to a good polemic, the journalist and dendroclimatologist Patrick McIlheran informs us:

The state supremes recently ruled that justices can't be bounced off cases solely because of legal campaign contributions or ads made on a justice's behalf by outside groups.

How do you say, "Dead in the water at the moment." At least, that's how Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson (who is truly in the proverbial understanding reminiscent of Job) put it this afternoon.

In fact the authors of the proposed rules of judicial conduct, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, brought inconsistencies of language to the justices' attention last month, and Justice Prosser today rescinded his vote to approve the originally submitted rule provisions "verbatim."

Tough to "rule" with fewer than four justices. So for the time being the due process rights of litigating parties before the courts have yet to be displaced by the First Amendment rights of judges to solicit and receive political campaign contributions. Which is as it should be.

Alternatively, Mr. McIlheran could try reading his own paper.

Also today, Justice Roggensack helped give some indication that a completed per curiam opinion and possibly more may be imminent in at least one of several motions currently before the court, requesting the recusal of Michael Gableman in criminal appeals.

What's certain: There are some frayed nerves and thus some snarky attitudes on that court. It's fascinating to observe but disturbing too.

eta: McIlheran's latest routine.

Saudis join ranks of Inhofe, Palin

"It appears from the details of the [e-mail] scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," said the kingdom's lead climate negotiator.

:facepalm:, :headdesk:, and so forth.

h/t Climate Progress.

This week's Con Law puzzler

Comes from Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack:

[W]hen a citizen votes in a judicial election, he or she exercises a right guaranteed under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Q: Exercises which First Amendment right? Successful responses may assume either that the year is 1791, 1870, Dec. 12, 2000, or 2009.

Weak positive responders still react as expected*

There is, say [bloggers like illusory tenant], nothing to see here and "wing nuts" who say other things are so stupid — not at all like us smart people.

Obviously I have never made either of those claims. Of course there are always plenty of things to see, everywhere, all the time.

And, in reality, what I have strongly suggested is that if even people as stupid as me can read and understand the relevant scientific literature, then there's no excuse for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to publish "wing nut" propaganda. Which is what it has been doing.

* D'Arrigo et al, 2008.

Musicians demand retraction of positive review

From Glenn Beck.

That's got to be a first.

Minority type thing was not glamorous

Then as now, in pursuit of serious academics

"Hawaii was a little too perfect," Palin [better known as Lynn Vincent] writes. "Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls." Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home."

— The New Yorker

McIlheran proves warming seems to have halted

I've just completed P-Mac's journalism trick to ignore all of reality.

Having reviewed the scientific literature, ace reporter and right-wing climatologist guy Patrick McIlheran summarizes his findings:

[The Hadley Centre e-mails reveal] experts who wrote the doom narrative, discussing among themselves how to manipulate data to make observations fit their predictions. One telling message from the unit's head is about how to "hide the decline" in observed temperatures, as global warming seems to have halted about a decade ago, something their models are unable to explain.

Have any of these tedious wing-nuts bothered to find out what was meant by "hide the decline"? It was not a decline in "observed" temperature (temperature is measured, not observed).

Measured temperatures rose.*

The best:

Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.

Yes, the same Hadley Centre Patrick McIlheran just got done accusing of "hiding the decline in observed temperatures."

And yes, that is from McIlheran's own link to Der Spiegel. What's not so well hidden is the decline in the right-wing guy's credibility, which is less easy to measure,** but a constant amusement to observe.

 * Remarkably, McIlheran has since adopted the position that the question of whether temperatures are rising or not rising is simply "a subtlety" that he somehow overlooked. If you can believe that.

** Plus or minus 1.5 micrometers from zero.

Holy Spirit credited with choosing gay bishop

"I believe the people of the diocese, by the grace and power and influence of the Holy Spirit, went beneath skin deep, went beneath the superficial characteristics and boxes into which we put people to really look at individual people," said the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55.

Others would dispute whether these are the appropriate attentions and dispositions of the Holy Spirit. But since nobody's ever caught one and stuck it in a bottle, there's little point to bringing it up.

The sentence reads just as well, if not better:

"I believe the people of the diocese went beneath the superficial characteristics and boxes into which we put people to really look at individual people," said Glasspool.

Yeah it's old

Still funny though.

Jesus made county government to punish Evil

Civil government was God's idea. The first several verses of Romans 13 tell us He established government and that people in authority are ministers of God assigned to promote good and punish evil.

From Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke's officially endorsed message to police officers at mandatory events.

Clarke also "announced that he would be making upcoming promotions to the rank of Captain and distributed written material that included a quotation from the Bible. The handouts listed the qualities a leader should look for in his inner circle — one of which was 'people of faith.'"

That's the worst of it, actually. Pat Tillman need not apply. One of these days the offensive notion that not being a "person of faith" implies a lack of other positive qualities needs to be gotten rid of.

Milwaukee Deputy Sheriff's Ass'n v. Clarke (.pdf; 14 pgs.)

A Seventh Circuit panel affirmed the federal district court,* which found that Sheriff Clarke violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution despite Clarke's free speech argument that he was "compelled" to admit a Christian proselytizing outfit to meetings of the police requiring mandatory attendance.

h/t Religion Clause.

* Where the plaintiff officers were awarded one dollar, the attorneys $38,687.41, a more tangible dichotomy than "good vs. evil."

Bopp forgets who client is

A real piece of work:

Bopp said he never said anything disparaging the right to counsel and that the State Bar was hypocritical because his comments came as part of his defense of Gableman.

"They are criticizing me for the zealousness of my representation," he said.

When you are speaking for a justice of the Supreme Court it does not diminish the zealousness of one's defense of him to refrain from disparaging the justice system itself. On the contrary.

There are many strategies, all at least equally zealous, which do not include for presenting a justice of the Supreme Court as harboring animosity against a certain class of defendants and their counsel.

You'd think this would be self-evident.

TN mayor goes Facebook nuts

We sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load ... try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation* ... you obama people need to move to a muslim country ... oh wait, that's America ... pitiful.

Ye gods. Should be a shoo-in for a House seat next year, right?

* And that's just a few prefatory remarks about Osiris and Mithra.

Sanctity of traditional marriage update

Woods is in negotiations with Nordegren to up the stakes of their prenuptial agreement — replete with sports-contract-like incentives that would keep her standing by her man. She is reportedly being offered a "re-signing" bonus of $5 million to stay married to Tiger — about half of what A-Rod got when he reupped with the Yankees. She'd get $80 million to hang with him another seven years.

Such a deal. I wonder what was Gloria Allred's cut.

Greg Norman's got nothing on that shark.

What the bishops are saying

Declares Ramesh Ponnuru, who is another deeply influential conservative blog-thinker of unique genius:

When the bishops say that all people should have "ready access to quality, comprehensive, and affordable health care," that doesn't even mean that they have endorsed universal coverage, let alone a specific legislative attempt to come closer to it.

Good point. Ready access to it isn't the same as partaking in it. As long as you are able to stand beside a hospital where there is health care if not actually go inside, is what the bishops are saying.

h/t Sadly, No!

Conservative humor discovered

You look like an aging queen on her knees at some gloryhole waiting for a miraculous birth certificate to be slipped in from the next stall so you can engage your latest perversion until you climax all over yourself.

Influential nut-right political scientist Dan Riehl reminds us that all gay people are practicing Sadists. But no heterosexual people are.

NY Post photo caption defines whole culture

Jaimee Grubbs was a short-lived contestant on VH1's reality show "Tool Academy" with her then-boyfriend, Shawn "Loud Mouth Tool" Southern.

And there you have it. Now you can die peacefully.

Gableman saga enters third annum

New Year's briefs (not to be confused with Christmas socks).

Gableman's entire term on the court is only ten years. If the Wisconsin Judicial Commission doesn't get him, George Soros will.

Keep this one under your revolutionary beret

I reckoned I was about as radical as Alexander Hamilton, but now I'm a member of "the Wisconsin liberal fringe."* Please don't let that get around, or I'll be expelled from my anarcho-syndicalist kaffee klatsch.

* One can see why. [Judith Faulkner] is one of the top donors to Democratic political candidates in Wisconsin ...

What possible concern would that be of mine. I never got a penny.

McIlheran turns his knob

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's resident "right-wing guy" and lately eminent dendroclimatologist Dr. Patrick McIlheran, Ph.D.:

The British center admitted it threw out its original data on which it pinned its predictions of disaster. Other researchers, thus, cannot check the claims.

Absolute nonsense. At some time during the 1980s, the CRU did not store duplicate data sets which are still available elsewhere.

McIlheran doesn't even know what a wide variety of climate data sets are available and therefore how closely they all agree, so instead he diligently picks through the Washington D.C. Moonie Times for regurgitated Competitive Enterprise Institute* press releases.

And then has the temerity to call this journalism.

For one thing, many of these data sets are online. For another, the CRU is in England, which is governed by different laws and where not all data are subject to the same freedom of information guidelines.

Other data sets are retained by their respective countries' meteorological services. So if the CEI is ultimately rebuffed by NASA on grounds that it filed a vexatious lawsuit, it can always turn its efforts toward Botswana (member since 1967).

McIlheran also manages to turn a lawyer at the right-wing think tank into a "researcher."

Much like a coal industry consultant was turned into Galileo.

As for the Superfreakonomics guy, he doesn't appear to be apprehending any available data either.

Incidentally this, too, is addlepated gibberish:

As the brewing Climategate scandal is proving, data surrounding the global warming theory was manipulated and manufactured to 'hide the decline,' in temperatures.

"Policy veteran" Brian Fraley (and it gets worse).

In the particular, celebrated example the policy veteran Fraley hasn't the foggiest notion that he's talking about, there is no decline in temperatures. There is an increase in temperatures. Or maybe Fraley has a detailed explanation for the period of discrepancy between instrument and certain proxy measurements. If he does, then he's advised to contact the editors of Nature at his earliest convenience.

And if the veteran policy analyst hurries, then he can share a teleprompter with Obama in Copenhagen next week.

* A beneficiary of Bradley Foundation money, which could in some way account for McIlheran's transparently dissembling shenanigans on the pages of the daily newspaper. Sorry, "journalism."

Nightmares now, for sure

Oversize, jumping big head carp.

Blogger critically injured in hyperbole mishap

A local blogger remained in you-can't-possibly-be-serious condition Thursday morning after narrowly escaping with what remained of his credibility when he compared Patrick J. Michaels to Galileo.

Michaels is a notorious climate change denialist while the legendary 17th-century Italian astronomer is widely considered the Father of Modern Science.

Earlier George Monbiot, a Grauniad environmental writer who has been highly critical of the climate scientists at the heart of the "ClimateGate" "scandal," included Patrick Michaels among his rogue's pantheon of "Top 10 climate change deniers,"* along with Sarah Palin, Okie politician James Inhofe, and a retired British television presenter who uncovered Marxist-Leninist brainwashing techniques on an episode of Teletubbies (the latter being actually further down the list than Michaels).

Sources said the blogger's physicists advised an intensive regimen of bed rest and cold compresses rather than proceed with his next credulousness-defying metaphor, dubbing Palin "The Werner Heisenberg of the North Slope" because the former governor of Alaska, at a loss to verify both her velocity and location, quit.

* Be sure to peruse the Affidavit of Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, reluctant witness, wherein your affiant emphasizes his principled devotion to complete data transparency and full disclosure. For other people.

eta: gmta.

Godwin's Provision MCMLXXXIV

Is there a subsection of Godwin's Law dealing with George Orwell? Universal health care as Orwellian dystopia — I mean, come on.

Kids these days, Oy

More than 60% of high school students in Milwaukee Public Schools are sexually active, according to the district's 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

Either high school has changed dramatically or else I was even more oblivious then than I thought. And I went to a Roman Catholic high school, which you'd expect to be a relative orgy to begin with.

The company he keeps

Hope it doesn't rub off too much.

Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Neumann will share a stage Thursday night with ex-Bush White House adviser Karl Rove, who will give a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I heard they measure Karl Rove's "approval rating" in degrees Kelvin. And I'm here to tell you that Jay Bullock will not be sharing a stage, or anything with Karl Rove, not on Thursday night, and not on any night.

Doomsday for Global Warming

Er, it's coming, any minute now, just you wait. Oh yes.

"Climategate" continues to entertain. Witness this chappie, a certain Mr. James Delingpole, scribbling in the leading "Climategate" chronicler, the Daily Torygraph, who really has the goods:

Finally: Phil Jones, director of University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and the scientist most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal is to "stand aside" pending an "independent" investigation

A hasty damage limitation exercise prior to the whitewash which will eventually see him restored to his position?

Or a genuinely independent and thorough investigation into the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age?

We shall see.

That's it. And this bit of speculation and gossip merits the headline, Climategate: the AGW edifice begins to collapse.

In a breaking item today, Mr. Delingpole pointed convincingly to the front page of a London tabloid, the Daily Express. It showed Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, greeting a Beefeater in front of Buckingham Palace. Both wore furry hats, which means global warming is false.

The "scandal" is supposedly about science, yet nobody has discovered any fraudulent research presented by any climate scientist. None.

Indeed, the only questionable data manipulation has been perpetrated by the so-called denialists. Which is as expected.

Fear not, however, because local right-wing "think tank" the MacGyver Institute is on the case and turns up:

John C. Dowling, the University of Wisconsin's Senior University Legal Counsel, wrote, "According to the current Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, there has been no correspondence concerning the Ph.D. granted to Patrick Michaels in 1979."

Nothing.

And: Grumps recalls when stolen e-mails were all the outrage. Funny how righteous theft is nowadays, when it doesn't involve Sarah Palin.

We're done for now!

MacGyver releases the bloodhounds

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's ace environmental reporter Patrick "Journalism is My Trade" McIlheran (who has yet to provide the merest scintilla of "Climategate" "evidence") warns us that the MacGyver Institute, another right-wing "think tank," is hot and heavy on the scent:

Efforts within the environmental science community to manipulate data and intimidate skeptics ... masking data, incorporating false trends into climate research, and blocking efforts ... campaign of intimidation ... efforts to mask or manipulate data ... efforts to undermine ... yadda yadda yadda ...

Who needs an "investigative reporter" when it's so much more convenient to simply assume in advance every conclusion you're seeking to justify. And no, that irony is not lost.

- Made wind-operated trip hammer for blacksmith
- Escaped from noose with sharp-edged belt buckle
- Roped awning supports, horse pulled awning down
- Alcohol poured on pine nuts in stove mimics gunshots

MacIver Institute Online.

That "smoking Climategate gun"

Funny stuff:

I have argued elsewhere that if you're going to falsify results, then

; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!

isn't the sort of thing you'd stick in your code.

Instead of "VERY ARTIFICAL ... !!" they should've added a comment like "THIS CORRECTION IS PART OF OUR COMMIE PLOT TO RULE THE WORLD!!"

It would've made Raymond's job that much easier.

I can only imagine if these folks had stolen Einstein's scraps of paper when he worked at the Swiss patent office.

See, he crossed out that equation. It's on the paper, next to the coffee stain !!!

We demand the troof about the gravity !!!

Tim Lambert: Two plus two equals Commie plot.

Also, h/t Lambert:

"May I see it, your Lordship?" Scrotum asked. Monckton gestured at his desk, where the laptop showed the pink portcullis with entwined tutu and pith helmet that was the peer's favourite screensaver. Scrotum began to read ...

Mycroft Monckton makes mischief.

And then there is the really very Breitblart

Kill the scientist.

Charlie Sykes is really not very bright, is he

Or else he is very bright and cynically panders to the collection of dim bulbs that comprise his discipleship. Local AM radio buffoon Charlie Sykes is troubled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that "the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited."

Except to the extent that health care has an effect on and is affected by commerce among the several States (which is a very large extent indeed), Pelosi's statement is right on the money, and she can claim several decades worth of U.S. Supreme Court decisions for support.

Try as Charlie Sykes might, he won't find any "limit" on that regulatory power mentioned in Art. I, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

And guess who helped author one of the most recent of those decisions reaffirming the reach of the federal legislative branch's constitutionally enumerated power over interstate commerce? You are correct: Conservative hero and avatar Justice Antonin Scalia.

He said even if you were just growing a couple of weeds in your living room for personal, medicinal purposes, the feds could still come and throw your sorry keister in prison, on an interstate commerce theory.

So, yeah, essentially unlimited.

Incidentally, the otherwise highly commendable link aggregator WisOpinion.com counts Charlie Sykes's one- and two-sentence gibberishes among its "Featured Blogs." Nobody really knows why.

This ridiculous clown but not, for example, the fabulous Jill Sixpack.

Fortunately we can (and do) know better.

GOP priorities, a demonstration

The Washington Moonie Times has an article about several of Obama's judicial nominees, which for some inexplicable reason includes a photo of Michael Gableman, who a three-judge panel unanimously found last month to have willfully violated* two separate provisions of the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct.

Now it seems a number of conservative Republicans in the U.S. Congress have expressed concerns over our former State Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Butler, Jr., who was a judge for 16 years but during which time was never once found by anybody to have violated any provisions of the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct.

Many thanks again, Republicans, for insulting our intelligence, and not least for characterizing the "antipathy toward Christianity" of Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Judge David F. Hamilton, whose father is a retired United Methodist minister in Indianapolis.

You all are truly scientific political geniuses.

Earlier: Jeff Sessions, defender of the Constitution.

* He may or may not be in the process of escaping responsibility through — ironically — a loophole. It yet remains to be seen.

Mike Huckabee is 100% pro-criminal

On his radio show today, Huckabee again addressed the slayings of four police officers,* placing blame both with his own State's system and the government of Washington.

Sure, blame everybody else. However, if the justice system sentenced Maurice Clemmons to 97 years and you released him after 11, then I'm not sure how you get to implicate the justice system.

Because it sounds to me like the justice system got this one right.

Judge Marion Humphrey, Pulaski County, Arkansas:
We're a country that says we believe in mercy. This is the Advent season. And one of the things about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is that He promoted mercy. And that is a part of the makeup of some of us who serve on the benches, who serve on parole boards, who serve in governors' offices.

Of course. It also explains why U.S. prisons are jammed with non-violent drug offenders and why simple possession (sans any intent to sell) of eight grams of marijuana is a felony. Moreover, 'It shows he is a conservative with compassion,' as some approving observers are saying of Mike Huckabee's parole decisions.

If Huckabee's presidential aspirations are in tatters, he could always move to Ozaukee County and take a run at the State Supreme Court. He should get a lot of support from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. They were always big on the "pro-criminal" angle.

* BurnabyDude wrote:
The suspect was armed and dangerous + he didn't stop on command. As far as I see it, just dessert — and good riddance too. No chance of being commuted by an opportunist governor or being paroled by some idiotic board.

Typical bleeding heart, left-coast socialist Canadian.