Memo to righties: How about paying attention to the folks over at MIT, who, unlike Carlin, might actually know something about science and might actually have done some research.

(but then MIT is just some know-nothing wimp liberal organization, right?)

------------

Climate change odds much worse than thought

New analysis shows warming could be double previous estimates

David Chandler, MIT News Office
May 19, 2009

URL for article:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html

Not sure who first said this - it may have been Hubert Humphrey - but the right to be heard does not imply the right to be taken seriously.

Sweet baby jesus. Does this stupidity ever end? All of this crap reminds one of all od those pictures that the government took of those poor bastard soldiers who whee ordered to sit (at varying distances) from test nuclear explosions wearing only their uniforms and sun glasses. It's OK fellas. It's just a test. Trust us. see the pretty mushroom cloud?

I guess these wingnuts expect us to believe what they are saying because, well, because they are saying it.

Sweet baby Jesus...

It's only a hop, skip, or jump away from Carlin's work of fiction to 'the Earth is flat.'

In a few weeks talking heads on both CNN and MSNBC will be breathlessly wondering aloud why the Obama administration is suppressing a bombshell report that refutes global warming.

Science is too important of a subject to be left to scientists, I guess.

i'd personally like to see Carlin git a kid's show on saturday mornings -- yes, that's right, bring back "Watch, Mr. Wizard"

Yahoo!

But this guy has an undergrad degree in physics that he probably got in the early 60's, and has been studying the topic as a hobby for six years or something. If that's not an expert, I don't know who is.

The actual scandal is that Carlin plagiarized most of the content of his memo from right-wing denialist websites, verbatim, word-for-word, without attribution.

Apart from the fact that Carlin was peddling ExxonMobil-funded lies and pseudo-scientific garbage within the EPA, the fact that Carlin knowingly misrepresented the work of others as his own should be grounds for firing him.

I know we covered this the other day, but probably it's best to keep setting the record straight before bogus claims gain traction.

Good luck with that, Steve. Bogus claims seem to gain traction on the extreme right wing no matter how many facts are thrown at them. BTW, did you know Obama is NOT an American citizen?

What's amazing about this is the continuing ability of the right wing media to catapult this utterly stupid and irrelevant story into national prominence -- and the MSM's continuing supine gullibility in further propagating it simply because they saw a siren on Drudge's site. And they know that the 28-percenters who will be the ones having a cow about this are all linked into the same Drudge-Fox-Limbaugh information network and will of course exercise absolutely no critical thinking skills or bullshit checks on this. It's really incredible and something the left will never replicate. Good for us, I suppose. Too bad for the rest of the country.

Why do Republicans waste their time saying that stuff? They should really take some basic college classes in science and logic before they try to talk.

I have two thoughts. First, whether EPA commissioned Carlin's studies or not, and whether Carlin's undergrad physics degree gives him any credibility, are both red herrings. Scientific results stand or fall on their own merits, at least in principle; saying that Carlin's not very knowledgeable or the EPA didn't ask for the work can only work as explanation, at a secondary level.

Second, Republicans always seem to do this when it comes to anything having to do with science--find *one guy* who disagrees with the mainstream, and claim that this undercuts the entire endeavor, whether that guy is credible or not. Not all Republicans are so ignorant, I suppose--a lot of the rest are just cynical.

The really appalling thing about this is that inhofe and Barrasso are puppets for the oil and gas industry and by perpetuating this horseshit they are criminals committing crimes against humanity.

A thorough debunking of this available at RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/langswitch_lang/ho

RSA - While I see what you're saying about these being "red herrings," I think in this case it's quite important. I mean, if the EPA thought this guy was credible enough to request him to write a report, and then rejected the report based upon his conclusions, it'd be kind of a big story. The Bush Admin did that sort of thing all the time: Rejecting it's own experts when it didn't like what they had to say.

But for them to reject an unsolicited memo from someone they didn't think was qualified to write such a memo, and who doesn't seem qualified to people who don't know him, tells a completely story. This wasn't the EPA rejecting the conclusions of its own experts, as Republicans claim, but the EPA rejecting the conclusion of a crackpot who happens to work for the agency under an unrelated capacity. Simply because someone works for the government doesn't give them the right to insert their crackpot opinion into every discussion.

I see your point, Doc; that's true.

Someone needs to be seriously humiliated if this ever makes it's way out of the rightwing nut-o-sphere into the national media. I mean anyone who bring this up needs to be nailed to the ground and never let up.

God, I hate this shit.

I see your point, Doc; that's true.

Wow. As sad as it is, it always surprises me to read someone say that.

Honestly, one of my greatest victories online was in a debate over whether electronic voting machines should leave a paper trail (I naturally said they should) and was actually able to convince a wingnut of why it was necessary. Sure, that was one wingnut on a messageboard chock full of them, but still, I was amazed that I actually got the guy to listen to reason. Somehow, they all had been of the opinion that you'd just take the paper receipt home with you; leaving no actual paper trail in case of machine failure or fraud. And so they thought it was a laughably bad idea, which it would be, if we were stupid enough to do it as they thought we would. Without a doubt, they had all gotten the misconception from the same rightwing talking point.

And so the fact that I was able to convince one wingnut was quite a breakthrough. Of course, that was back when Yahoo had messageboards, so you can tell that this was a quite awhile ago. And yet I still cherish the memory.

Doctor Biobrain,

Did you screen cap it for posterity? A winger admitting they're wrong is a museum-worthy rarity.

Doctor Biobrain:

Several years ago I was on the Yahoo boards, topic Iraq war and the lies leading up to it. I can't claim to getting a winger to see reason, but I apparently convinced an independent. The wingers' messages on the topic were incoherent, lacking any discernible point, and filled with invective. Unfortunately, so were some of the posts from fellow lefties. But I kept posting facts along with pleas for greater civility in posting from all sides. Finally an independent posted back that the liberals had clearly won the debate.

The MSM are more in the tank for the wingers than for us, and we have no equivalent to Fox or RR radio. But we rule on the 'tubes. We just have to keep plugging away, presenting facts, refuting RR wacko talking points, all the while being civil, please. We "won" the last two elections (granted, far from perfectly, but sure as hell the results beat the alternative). And the young people, for the most part, aren't buying RR bullshit anymore. So let's hang in there and not get discouraged, ok?

Key logical point about a certain conservative attitude: Many right-wingers argue, AGW is not credible because it is "arrogant to think that Man can noticeably alter the World" etc. Well no. Whether humanity can influence the world in X manner or not is a question to answer through scientific method, not a presumption or result of intuition anyway. And that's how those who posit AGW etc. have proceeded, even being aware of probabilistic issues v. certainties.

However, it definitely *is* arrogant to think that your intuitions about whether it seems likely we can or can't do X, or your intuitions about other peoples' ideas, are valid guides to belief.

rsRTWg

If you have to do it, you might as well do it right.

If you have to do it, you might as well do it right.

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