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1. dayo’s response seemed rather inchoate here. and frankly, it’s a touch retarded to think that the value of american citizenship is “infinite.” i have an uncle who is a wealthy man in a very poor country. he owns several business, has personal servants, homes several homes, and is given a high degree of deference by the high and mighty. he has lived abroad, but has no incentive to emigrate to a society where he is likely to wind up in the mushy middle class.

   — razib · May 18, 09:13 PM · #

2. Yes, I am undecided on what Noah proposes, and I hope to follow up with a post posing some questions, but I agree that Dayo’s response in this clip is unpersuasive.

   — Conor Friedersdorf · May 18, 09:18 PM · #

3. Noah Millman has Jeff Daniels’ voice.

   — turnbuckle · May 19, 03:47 AM · #

4. Isn’t the point here that people who read things like Human Events and WND really are gullible idiots? I would never say that most conservatives are dumb, or even that conservatives are dumber than liberals. But I’m pretty sure Human Events here has pegged its audience well.

   — dan · May 19, 05:07 AM · #

5. conservatives are dumber. otherwise they wouldn’t fall for magical thinking like Breitbart scams and JIT Rasmussen fake polling.

   my hypothesis is that the 40percenters of IQ are very heavily represented in the low information base of the GOP.
   Also, too, there is the documented negative correlation of IQ and religiosity….both the GOP and the TPM exhibit extreme religosity.

   — matoko_chan · May 19, 11:00 PM · #

6. Great, thanks for the sharing.

   — 被リンクサービス · May 20, 12:42 PM · #

7. Sheesh Conor think about it……the GOP has selected for decades for constituents too dim to vote in their own economic self-interest and uneducated enough to lack understanding of theory of evolution and cell biology.
   It is memetic fitness selection for the unbright.
   Plus the GOP and the TPM exhibit very high levels of religiosity, which is correlated with lower IQ.
   Add in populist IQ baiting and anti-intellectualism, and at least the upper tail of IQ is going to be lamentably under-represented on the right.
   I also think high religiosity and low IQ correlate with high levels of conspiricy theory and magical thinking…but i haven’t seen any studies on that yet.

   — matoko_chan · May 20, 12:46 PM · #

8. If you auction off visas, the winners will tend to be people who A) Have a lot of money and B) Desperately need to leave where they live now. In other words, you’ll get a high proportion of organized criminals.

   We’re already seeing it in Los Angeles, where the high cost of living acts rather like a visa auction. More than a few newcomers have ties to mafias centered in the ex-Soviet Union.

   — Steve Sailer · May 20, 08:28 PM · #

9. Before folks comment on the overwhelming ignorance of conservatives, they might want to head over to the Huffington Post and read about, for example, how vaccines cause autism. Who needs scientists and clinicians when you have Jim Carrey:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-carrey/the-judgment-on-vaccines_b_189777.html

   Or the overwhelming acceptance of things like homeopathy, faith healing, acupuncture, etc. (Deepak Chopra is a frequent contributor).

   — John Harrold · May 20, 08:32 PM · #

10. Actually, SBH (social brain hypothesis) is incorporating a lot of eastern religious ideology.
    Vaccines don’t cause autism….but there are liberal bio-luddites as well as conservative bio-luddites…they have different intellectual failings is all.
    And there are far more science refusniks and bio-luddites on the conservative side.
    The problem is religiosity.
    Conservatives exhibit far greater religiosity on the whole, and religiosity has an established negative correlation with IQ.

    — matoko_chan · May 20, 10:16 PM · #

11. Actually scientistic claims like those about the vaccines, or belief in Aliens are more predominant on the left, Jim Carrey, seriously when did he become an authority, also skepticism toward traditional religion leads one
    toward frauds like Scientology, sketched by a science fiction writer with
    a talent for gathering up the gullible

    — ian cormac · May 20, 11:13 PM · #

12. So? There are established studies on the negative correlation of IQ with high religiosity.
    Are you arguing that the right does not exhibit higher religiosity?
    That is false.

    — matoko_chan · May 21, 12:08 AM · #

13. Noah Millman knows little about work visas. Very. Actually, both but esp. our man Millman.

    — vizaaa · May 21, 12:41 AM · #

14. Speaking of scientism,
    And man said, Let us make living cells with a website coded into their DNA.
    And it was so.

    Enjoy, matoko.

    — Keid A · May 21, 12:59 AM · #

15. I promise I didn’t plan on this happening:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathy-treatment-unpl_b_570725.html

    Seriously matoko_chan, I’m from a red state and I actively work in drug development. So I know plenty of folks on the right who, for example don’t believe in evolution. I’ve never encountered the same level of ignorance toward science with regard to medicine that I’ve encountered when dealing with folks on the left. When I have someone with a PhD in English tell me that vaccines are evil and basically parrot Bill Mahr about curing sickness by just eating well and removing “toxins” from their environment, I truly feel embarrassed for them.

    But hey, far be it from me to remove anyone’s feeling of self-righteousness toward their ideological opposites.

    — John Harrold · May 21, 10:04 PM · #

16. John Harrold, Conor’s example from Human Events is a homeopathy scam.
    My physician father trained in acupuncture for his orthopaedic practice, to help people that cant tolerate anesthesia.
    Acupuncture works.
    I am merely pointing out that both the GOP and the Tea Party exhibit extremely high levels of religiosity.
    There is scientifically established correlation between lower IQ and higher religiosity.

    — matoko_chan · May 21, 11:35 PM · #

17. lawl, Matt X is talking bulshytt.
    for non-Anthemed amoung you…….
    Bulshytt: Speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said.

    “ It’s because of his efforts and those of many other conservatives and libertarians that barely a third of the American public still believes in man-made global warming.”
    hehe, yeah and 70% of americans believe in creationism, and 58% of republicans are birthers. So?
    Quite an accomplishment, scamming the 40percenters and the low information base with disinformation instead of educating them.
    I have a little surprise for the polling fakers and data massagers…..a new Urban Dictionary meme.

    “Thanks for your definition of Rasmussen Statistics!
    Editors reviewed your entry and have decided to publish it on urbandictionary.com.
    It should appear on this page in the next few days:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rasmussen%20Statistics
    Urban Dictionary”

    coming soon, from the people that brought you the teabagger meme!

    “Rasmussen Statistics
    Fake or selectively massaged statistics published in the interest of supporting a particular narrative. Based on techniques from “How to Lie with Statistics.”
    Rasmussen Statistics include positive poll selection, house bias and sampling distortion.
    Named for celebrity pollster Scott Rasmussen who selectively did not poll PA-12 because he knew the liberal candidate would win.
    Rasmussen statistics are often cited by teabaggers, conservatives, and followers of the Tea Party Movement….for example, “the Tea Party Movement is bipartisan and multi-racial” is an example of Rasmussen Statistics.”

    — matoko_chan · May 21, 11:49 PM · #

18. I think it’s a valid point, John Harrold, when it comes to flaky alternative medicine, new age, “natural”, herbal, you name it, it would be hard to beat the left.

    If Christianity is the right’s religion, Wicca is the left’s.

    — Keid A · May 22, 12:23 AM · #

19. “100% of liberals are 9-11 truthers,”
    is that a rasmussen statistic?
    because its false.

    and the UD just took me seriously.
    ;)
    i have no problem with christians…..i dislike christofascists and evangelical christians that want to convolve church and state and tell other citizens what they can’t do based on religious doctrine.

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 12:35 AM · #

20. My Mohammed smiley from yesterday :-) Now what do you do? Censor my amusing smiley or matoko_chan’s deranged comments? Or take the easy way out and do both?

    — vizaaa · May 22, 12:41 AM · #

21. This guy is pretentious enough to label is website The American Scene and he gets no traffic at all
    wallah, this was a place where Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat blogged. Then after they saddled us with that obscene succubus Palin they had to scuttle off and find dark corners where they didn’t have to take comments.

    Nobody will ever take you seriously if you use words like “teabagger”
    well yes, they will.
    you don’t unnerstand how the teabagger meme got glued to the TPM do you?
    you see….people my age don’t naturally think of taxation without representation and funnie tri-corner hats when we hear the word “tea”.
    we think of teabagging our fallen comrades in videogames.
    its cultural evolution…and the right is pretty much disenfranchised from mainsteam american culture anymore.
    that is why i luff the UD….its 80proof culture schnapps.
    you should read it sometime.
    ;)

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 12:47 AM · #

22. i loathe rasmussen because he whores for the right.
    he got caught lying with statistics.
    mathematics is holy to me….so Ras just made it personal. ;)

    and im not an atheist.
    ima mevlevi sufi transhumanist.

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 12:53 AM · #

23. I guess it’s too much to expect our hero Connor and Jim Manzi to refute the column by James M. Taylor that I posted above

    What exactly do you think is there to refute? The idea that a bachelor’s degree in science qualifies someone as a “scientist”? The idea that astronauts and sun scientists are qualified to refute claims of climatology? (How does Nir Shaviv explain climate warming in the face of a ten-year decline in solar radiance? Or does he pretend like there’s no such decline? )

    Levin is simply repeating the absurd notion that there’s a scientific debate about the existence of anthropogenic climate change, and Manzi bullseyed him on it. The truth is that the only debate about the causes of global warming is happening among those least qualified to know. It’s simply the contour of the debate that, as you get farther from anybody who’s actually a climate expert, the more you think that the denialist position is a legitimate position for debate. No surprise, of course, that among the uneducated readers and writers of most conservative blogs, the assumption is that there’s absolutely no warming at all. (It was cold in Florida, once, so that proves it!)

    — Chet · May 22, 01:15 AM · #

24. The funny thing is evangelical simply means Christians who believe that the word of God comes from the bible, not some priest or Pope.

    Good! Does that mean we can retire the hoary “evangelical atheist”, since by definition an atheist doesn’t believe that the word of God comes from the Bible?

    — Chet · May 22, 01:17 AM · #

25. I guess that does makes me an evangelical atheist then, Chet, on the grounds that I became an atheist, in part, as a result of studying the Bible.

    — Keid A · May 22, 01:54 AM · #

26. Well Matt X, I have PhD in chemical engineering and I also model complex nonlinear systems. Given that, I “believe” in global warming. Although by “believe” here I actually mean there is more than enough evidence to suggest that A) the average temperature on the earth is increasing and B) human activity is a major contributing factor. I also have friends who work for the met office in the UK. They’re also scientists, and they tend to believe the same thing. Perhaps they should talk to scientists like Mark Levin who might set them straight?

    Of course you can choose to ignore this, and if you choose to, I would suggest you see matoko_chan’s father for any pain reality may cause you. I’m sure he can suggest appropriate therapy for you:

    [1] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/sham_acupuncture_is_better_than_true_acu.php

    — John Harrold · May 22, 02:25 AM · #

27. I’m a mechanical engineer. I have a lot of friends in engineering. We have a proven aptitude in science.

    LOL! I’ve known too many engineers to agree, I’m afraid. The only technical profession generally worse at science than engineers typically are is medicine. Far too many engineers and doctors are creationists (not to mention global warming deniers, like you) for me to take your claim to expertise seriously, here.

    For what it’s worth, I’m no climate expert either (biochemistry is my field.) But I’ve assessed the evidence as best I can and it’s quite convincing. There’s an unmistakable, ahistoric warming trend. We’ve known that the CO2 content of the atmosphere drives warming since the days of Arrhenius, and human activity puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than 100 eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo – every single year.

    To deny that humans are causing climate change is, it seems to me, to deny a substantial number of trivially-observable physical facts. And anthropogenic climate change is the nearly-universal consensus among climatologists.

    I think the fact that global temperatures have declined over the past decade is a rather significant fact that you can’t just sweept under the rug because it’s inconvenient for your dogma.

    But global temperatures haven’t declined over the past decade, they’ve increased over the past decade. Substantially. At, in fact, a greater rate of increase than any previous measured decade. And they’ve done this over a period where it should be getting cooler, because the sun is cooling.

    Alarmists have historically been proven to be just that, and time will prove you the fool. :)

    As an alarmist, I’ll be happy to be so proven! If climate change doesn’t inundate coastal areas of habitation, dramatically expand the range of various infectious diseases into populations with little innate resistance, and catastrophically disrupt human agriculture, I’ll be a very happy person.

    But the evidence is pretty clear that these things will happen if the climate continues to warm, as it has been doing. As much as I might wish to be proven wrong, my fear is that I won’t be. We can’t allow wishful thinking to forestall action when the consequences are likely to be so severe.

    What was that about about having an undegrad degree disqualifies you from being a scientist? Darwin had no degree at all, and his occupation is listed as “naturalist”, which is a joke.

    Sure, but his role in science these days is not so much as an authority as a figure of historic significance. Darwin had no degree in science – but there were no degrees in science at the time. And these days we have ample evidence for his model, all of it produced by experts with terminal degrees in their field.

    You’d think Christians were blowing up buildings, given their rage, but of course, our liberal heroes aren’t quite so rude to Muslims.

    Fundamentalist Muslims can suck it. (Does that make you feel better?)

    — Chet · May 22, 08:38 AM · #

28. Matt, can you show me the “10-year cooling trend” in this graph? Because it looks like its going up, not down.

    — Chet · May 22, 08:41 AM · #

29. That Dan Reihl crap is one of the ugliest things i have read here.
    When you have no argument of substance, go for character assassination.
    republicans eat their own i guess.
    don’t you see how disgusting that is to the youth demographic?
    all we see is a bunch of petty old stupid white people with no science.

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 12:10 PM · #

30. You are a global warming nut.

    So you couldn’t show me the “cooling trend” in recent temperatures. Check.

    Sure a lot of snow and cold weather this winter, but hey, don’t let that make you question your militant environnmentalism.

    Hrm, you seem to be under the misconception that it snows because it’s cold out. I guess you have to be from Minnesota (like me) to experience a winter when its too cold to snow.

    And, at any rate, I’m a proponent of global warming, not America warming. I know that people like you think of the west as the whole world – hence the obsession with the medieval European warm period.

    I want you liberals to stay out on that limb, because we are going to enjoy making you own it as the temperature and climate patterns don’t cooperate with your dogma.

    I’d just as soon the Earth made me look like a total idiot, as I said, but the problem for you is so far the Earth’s climate keeps proving us right and you wrong. Every new decade is the hottest on record; every year sets record highs in global average temperatures and the heat content of the Earth’s oceans. And nobody on your side has ever been able to explain how a cooling sun can drive warming temperatures, all other things being equal.

    I was willing to entertain global warming denialism about ten years ago. I pretty rapidly discovered that anybody who doesn’t take it on faith that “temperatures are declining” (no evidence for this claim is ever given) and “scientists are fabricating evidence for grant money” (no evidence given, nor any explanation of why they would want to do that, given how much money there is for non-AGW climatology) is labeled, as you did, a “global warming nut.”

    Sorry, but I just don’t have the kind of faith it takes to engage in global warming “skepticism.” The evidence is simply far too convincing, as much as I would like it all to go away.

    I think this piece utterly destroys Jim Manzi’s crediblity on global warming:

    It didn’t when you posted it the first time, Mark. Do you have any evidence against AGW besides these cut-and-paste hitjobs?

    Connor and fellow lightweight claimed in their Blogginheads, um, um, um, commentary, that, um, the Arizona law wasn’t going to stop cops from racial profiling although they did at least admit that the law does not permit racial profiling.

    But the law does allow racial profiling. It, in fact, enshrines racial profiling in regards to the specific issue of immigration.

    — Chet · May 22, 10:36 PM · #

31. Matt X,

    I would like to do a phone interview with you. Could you email me your phone number? I am completely serious. It’s conor.friedersdorf@gmail.com

    — Conor Friedersdorf · May 22, 11:09 PM · #

32. Matt X,

    In my experience, people who repeatedly make factually inaccurate assertions, post multiple times in a row, invoke Dan Riehl, and generally behave as you have above cannot be meaningfully engaged in the threaded comments format. (If you’re wondering how quickly you lost me, see your very first comment, when you suggest that I am mad at Human Events because they fired me.)

    Since our expectations about behavior in comments threads are so divergent as to make it impossible to have a useful exchange, I’m suggesting that we talk in a different format. If you’re willing to talk on the phone, kindly e-mail me your number. If you’re unwilling to speak by telephone, so be it, but I’m afraid that I am not going to respond to or acknowledge anything else you post on this site.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · May 23, 02:10 AM · #

33. I had a whole post up, which seems to have been taken down for some reason, so let me just get the highlight in here:

    WHen you start our with a clear falsehood that temperatures have been rising, it’s clear you are not interested in have a discussion based on intellectual honesty.

    But, honestly, temperatures have been rising. If there’s a legitimate case against AGW, doesn’t it have to start from verifiable physical reality? You know, the reality where the last decade has been the warmest in recorded history?

    — Chet · May 23, 08:11 PM · #

34. Tesla – you’ve been dramatically misinformed.

    There is no “cooling trend.” Temperatures have increased every year since 1998, not decreased – every year after 1999 is warmer, not cooler, than the year before. There’s been no pause in the global rise in temperatures, and cooling most definitely has not occurred.

    There is no cooling trend, as can be proven by simple inspection of any graph of global average temperatures. Click the link and see – the “cooling trend” the denial community bases literally every article and argument on simply doesn’t exist.

    Of these, 89 percent did not meet the Weather Service’s own requirement of being 30 meters away from artificial heating or reflecting sources such as pavements or building.

    As it turns out – it doesn’t matter. Statistical analysis between data sets compiled from the stations Watts said were ok, and the entire pool of stations including the ones Watts thinks are biased by their proximity to heat sources, showed that there’s absolutely no statistical bias in the climate data as a result of station location, and moreover, the stations Watts identifies as “biased” actually read cooler than they should, exactly the reverse of what Watts asserts.

    Sorry, Watts may have started out as someone convinced by the evidence – when he was a global warming proponent – but clearly he’s seen that there’s a lot more money to be made doing “gun-for-hire” hitjobs in service of climate change deniers. He’s just another one of a long chain of climate change deniers who have inflated their credentials.

    — Chet · May 24, 02:36 PM · #

35. I beg to differ, my alarmist friend. Remember, despite your “convincing” case, majority of Americans no longer believe man made global warming is occuring. It’s comical how you guys want to trash any scientist that doesn’t toe your global warming must be true line. Manzi did it in his hit piece, and of course, those scientists were actually scientists, not computer geeks designing software for Family Dollar stores.

    Hiding NASA Decline
    Written by Investor’s Business Daily | 05 April 2010

    Sen. David VitterThe agency that put Americans on the moon can’t tell you the temperature that day. It isn’t returning to the moon, but it will fix the brakes on your car. Two senators want to know what’s going on.

    The scandal unfolding at the nation’s space agency is worse than the climate scandal, where researchers with Britain’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia manipulated, destroyed and doctored climate data so that it supported the preordained conclusion that climate change was an imminent threat caused by man.

    If there is any doubt, just ask NASA.

    E-mail messages obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded its own climate findings were inferior to the CRU analysis. In one e-mail from 2007, when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate,” NASA’s Dr. Reto Ruedy responded with an emphatic no.

    “NASA’s temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA,” writes Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Indeed, NASA’s record shows it fudged data and cherry-picked data sources.

    Concerned about the validity of NASA’s climate research data, Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to space agency chief Charles Bolden demanding answers and inviting Bolden to testify to the Senate on the credibility of NASA’s data.

    “The American people deserve to learn the truth about the data,” Barrasso told FoxNews.com. “We shouldn’t make decisions affecting millions of American jobs when the data isn’t credible.”

    Particularly when NASA is admitting it isn’t.

    Barrasso and Vitter refer to a Feb. 27 study by former NASA physicist Edward Long. Long concluded that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), run by Al Gore’s favorite scientist, Dr. James Hansen, had been modifying data, “lowering temperature values for far-back dates and raising those in the more recent past.”

    Meteorologist Anthony Watts, on his SurfaceStations.org, has documented the inaccuracy of weather station data used by NASA. Watts says that “90% of them don’t meet (the government’s) old, simple rule called the ’100-foot rule’ for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence.”

    As we’ve reported, many U.S. stations are in places such as paved driveways, near rooftop exhaust vents, even near idling jet engines.

    The number of weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures has declined from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 currently. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.

    The stations remaining tend to be in warmer, urbanized areas, distorting the climate picture. Data for unmonitored areas are simply extrapolated from other, often far away, stations.

    NASA was caught with its thermometers down when Hansen breathlessly announced in 2007 that 1998 was the hottest year on record, with 2006 the third hottest. NASA and GISS were forced to correct their report in 2007 when ClimateAudit.com’s Steve McIntyre questioned the underlying data.

    NASA then announced that 1934, decades before the SUV, was in fact the warmest. The new numbers show that four of the country’s 10 warmest years were in the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939. Five of the hottest 10 occurred before World War II.

    Hansen, who began the climate scare some two decades ago, was caught fudging the numbers again in declaring October 2008 the warmest on record. This was despite the fact the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month and ranked it as only the 70th warmest October in 114 years.

    Meanwhile, NASA, where budget cuts have shelved plans to return to the moon, has announced it will help investigate Toyota’s unintended acceleration problems.

    If there’s anything we should be applying the brakes on, it should be NASA’s continued fudging of climate truth.

    — Matt X · May 24, 03:55 PM · #

36. I beg to differ, my alarmist friend. Remember, despite your “convincing” case, majority of Americans no longer believe man made global warming is occuring.

    A majority of Americans also believe in angels, demons, and that the universe was spoken into existence approximately midway through China’s Hongshang period (but that they, somehow, didn’t notice that they hadn’t existed.) I wouldn’t put much stock in what “a majority of Americans” believe, especially in the face of as successful a misinformation campaign as the denialists have put forth. I mean they’ve got you thinking that there’s a “10-year period of cooling”!

    It’s comical how you guys want to trash any scientist that doesn’t toe your global warming must be true line.

    It’s comical how every supposed “scientist” put forth to deny global warming is trashable! Why is it that the denialist camp can’t find a single legitimate climatologist with an argument against anthropogenic warming? Not just an argument for caution taken out of context, but an actual argument? Like, say, some data that supports this “period of cooling” claim?

    Hiding NASA Decline

    Right, if there’s two unimpeachable sources on global warming, it’s surely the Investor’s Business Daily and Senator David Diapers!

    Look, the problem with climate denialism is that it’s the same as creationism – the songs are always the same. I just rebutted the Watts “biased stations” claim, and here it is again, in the next reply. And the article above is like a denialist greatest hits:

    “It was hotter in the 30’s than it is today.” It’s called “global warming”, not “America warming” stupid.

    “Hadley-CRU fudged their data.” No, they didn’t. Turns out all that “malfeasance” was invented by deniers.

    “The monitoring stations are in places that distort the data.” No, they’re not. And even if you take out every station Watts has ever objected to (most of the “stations” his erstwhile investigators find aren’t climate stations at all, but regular infrastructure features like transformers and the like) the data shows that, if anything, the objectionable stations introduce a cooling bias.

    “Global warming stopped in 1008.” No, it didn’t. Temperatures continued to rise every year after 1998, at greater rates of increase than before. That’s a warming trend, not a cooling trend.

    It’s the same nonsense in every post. You’re just not someone who can be taken seriously, Matt.

    — Chet · May 24, 06:16 PM · #

37. I’m not concerned what you think. You are an alarmist shill, and reason and facts that do not conform to your dogma will be rejected by you. I understand that, and I want you alarmist fools to stay on that doomsday limb so I can enjoy sawing it off.

    You can lie and distort many things, but one thing you can’t lie and distort is temperature vs. CO2 data and get away with it. The data doesn’t support your alarmist propaganda. :)

    — Matt X · May 24, 06:34 PM · #

38. Here’s another good “think piece” for the open minded people in here:

    Al Gore’s defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday’s New York Times has many flaws, but I’ll focus on just one whopper — where the “Inconvenient Truth” man states the opposite of scientific fact.

    Gore says, “The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States.”

    Gore: Still citing predictions that science has disproved.
    It’s an interesting theory, but where are the facts?

    According to “State of the Climate” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average.” And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America’s East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up.

    So what was it, exactly, that Gore’s nameless scientists “have long pointed out”? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change and Water,” says climate models “project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics.” In other areas, the IPCC reports only “substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts.”

    In other words, the IPCC said that its models predicted some increases in rain or snow — not observed them. And only in high latitudes or the tropics, which hardly describes New York or Washington, DC.

    In fact, recent research actually contra dicts Gore’s claims about “significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere.”

    In late January, Scientific American reported: “A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change,” and noted that “an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming.”

    The new study came from a group of scientists, mainly from the NOAA lab in Boulder. The scientists found: “Stratospheric water-vapor concentrations decreased by about 10 percent after the year 2000 . . . This acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25 percent.”

    Specifically, the study found that water vapor rising from the tropics has been re duced, because it has gotten cooler there (another inconvenient truth). A Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: “Slowdown in Warming Linked to Water Vapor.”

    Moisture in the lower stratosphere (about 8 miles above the earth’s surface) has been going down, not up.

    Aside from clouds, water vapor accounts for as much as two-thirds of the earth’s greenhouse-gas effect. Water vapor traps heat from escaping the atmosphere — but clouds have the opposite effect (called “albedo”) by reflecting the sun’s energy back into space. And snow on the ground from the IPCC’s predicted precipitation in high latitudes would have the same cooling effect as clouds.

    What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the ef fect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made) and methane (which has mysteriously slowed since about 1990).

    This raises an intriguing question: Since the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it has the authority to regulation carbon emissions because of their presumed effect on the global climate, why hasn’t the EPA also attempted to regulate mist and fog?

    Alan Reynolds, a Cato Institute senior fellow, is author of “Income and Wealth.”

    — Matt X · May 24, 06:55 PM · #

39. You are an alarmist shill, and reason and facts that do not conform to your dogma will be rejected by you.

    I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to withhold judgement on my ability to conform my views to objective fact until, you know, you actually produce some.

    You can start with the evidence for your “10-year cooling” claim. Anytime, now.

    You can lie and distort many things, but one thing you can’t lie and distort is temperature vs. CO2 data and get away with it.

    Temperature tracks almost exactly with atmospheric CO2 concentration, so thanks for bringing that up. Especially if you introduce the paleoclimate record, which is why deniers have to work so hard to discredit paleoclimate researchers like Mann, Jones, and the rest. (Of course, to the dismay of the deniers, the conduct and research of these men is all but unassailable.)

    Here’s another good “think piece” for the open minded people in here:

    Yet another example of Matt not being able to tell the difference between “global” and “America.” It’s a standard denialist tactic – quote the stats on American when scientists talk about the globe, and quote the global stats when scientists are talking about the United States. Here’s the NOAA’s State of the Climate on precipitation in the United States, which is what Gore was talking about:

    Southeastern Brazil, parts of eastern and southeastern Asia, and most of Europe and the eastern half of the contiguous United States experienced wetter than average conditions…Across North America, snow cover for winter 2008-2009 was above average; the 12th largest extent since satellite records began in 1967.

    And, of course, bad news for those who want to use snowfall to deny climate change:

    As shown in the time series to the right, the mean Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during winter 2008-2009 was slightly below average. The Northern Hemisphere had the 20th lowest snow cover extent on record.

    In fact, recent research actually contra dicts Gore’s claims about “significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere.”

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t: atmospheric water vapor is increasing.

    It’s the denialist mantra – quotes taken out of context to support conclusions that are make-believe. And the constant backflipping – water vapor is decreasing, therefore AGW is a hoax; oh, wait – water vapor is increasing? AGW must be a hoax!

    — Chet · May 24, 07:09 PM · #

40. What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the ef fect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made)

    It should be noted that the “fraction” being referred to, here – the fraction of the atmospheric CO2 attributable to human fossil fuel activity – is almost 15%.

    — Chet · May 24, 07:17 PM · #

41. From the non-partisan website Ihatealgore.com…..humor is but one tool in our propaganda kit to keep people in the dark about CO2 driven Doomsday. :)

    Global warming fears seen in obsessive compulsive disorder patients
    source:

    A recent study has found that global warming has impacted the nature of symptoms experienced by obsessive compulsive disorder patients. Climate change related obsessions and/or compulsions were identified in 28% of patients presenting with obsessive compulsive disorder. Their obsessions included leaving taps on and wasting water, leaving lights on and wasting electricity, pets dying of thirst, leaving the stove on and wasting gas as well as obsessions that global warming had contributed to house floors cracking, pipes leaking, roof problems and white ants eating the house. Compulsions in response to these obsessions included the checking of taps, light switches, pet water bowls and house structures. “Media coverage about the possible catastrophic consequences to our planet concerning global warming is extensive and potentially anxiety provoking. We found that many obsessive compulsive disorder patients were concerned about reducing their global footprint,” said study author Dr Mairwen Jones.

    — Matt X · May 24, 08:08 PM · #

42. From the non-partisan website Ihatealgore.com….

    I’ve heard this one, too – Al Gore is fat, therefore global warming is a hoax. (Oh, and I guess he has a big house.)

    — Chet · May 24, 10:22 PM · #

43. Риспект. Также можно купить <a href=“http://prvigroup.ua”>недвижимость франции</a> и взять в аренду виллу во Франции.
    Respect!!! Взгляни сюда: поможет <a href=“http://domick.net”>построить дом</a> качественно…

    — Max · May 26, 12:49 PM · #

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