Black Friday Open Thread
Today is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. How many of you braved the stores today? I’m happily ensconced on my couch today. I try to avoid shopping on Black Friday if I can, I don’t like the craziness.
It’s your open thread so let’s get started.
Here is a cool link called “Cell Size And Scale.” It ranges in size from a coffee bean down to a carbon atom.
Talking Points Memo gives us the top 5 GOP distortions of 2009:
Number Five: Paul Ryan Draws Line On Graph
Except his numbers weren’t based on any analysis at all. Instead, Ryan used CBO numbers through 2018 and then drew an upward-sloping line on the graph completely at random. It didn’t take long for Republicans to catch on and begin claiming that Democratic policies would make government spending half of GDP before the end of the century.
Number Four: Senate Health Care Bill Will Cost $2.5 Trillion
Number Three: Republicans Try Math
It seems like so long ago that the House passed far-reaching cap and trade legislation. Before they did, though, the GOP did its best to raise the specter of another energy crisis, thanks to a new, and tyrannical “light switch tax.” To underscore their point, they claimed that, based on an MIT study, cap and trade legislation could cost the average household $3,128 a year. Too bad the author of that study claimed it was all hogwash. That didn’t deter leading Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, from repeating the number over and over again until the day the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed on the House floor.Number Two: Inhofe Says Obama ‘Gutting Our Military’
His claim was based on a meme, which made the rounds in early April, that the White House’s call for a modest increase in defense spending amounted to a “defense spending cut.” Inhofe took it to a whole new level. And to add insult to injury, he was in Afghanistan at the time.Number One: Death Panels
Yes, Sarah Palin is #1! Did you know “death panels” came from a Sarah Palin facebook post?
Tags: Open Thread
The very first sentence contains an inaccuracy, so I didn’t read the rest.
Alan Grayson has a really important point.
What are your guys take on the East Anglia’s CRU e-mails. (sorry if this came up on an earlier post)
Phil,
We hadn’t really posted on it because this isn’t really an area of our expertise so I was waiting for more people to weigh in on it to see what the real deal was.
Here is a good post to read, from one scientist involved:
Michael Mann Responds to CRU Hack. For a very technical discussion, go to this Real Climate post: The CRU Hack
My take on it is that what looks bad at first is pretty much much ado about nothing. The use of the word “trick” is meaningless and the “hide the decline” is the interesting part. If you read up on it, you find out that the one of the proxy measures for determining temperatures from longer ago is tree ring data. After about 1960 or so, this became a less reliable way to measure because pollution and climate change, so the trick was to use tree ring data up to a certain time and then replace with actual temperature readings. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this as long as you disclose. It had been disclosed, this was well known actually.
So, if climate science deniers want to use tree ring data to argue that the earth isn’t warming, let them do that. Actual temperature data, both ground readings and satellite, show warming. Glaciers continue to melt and sea ice continues to shrink.
I do think there’s a lesson in all of this. E-mail is not secure. Be careful what you say in e-mail. Don’t write something that might embarrass you later. I think there’s also another point that has been missed by many. The hacking of the databases and intimidation of scientists. That is very scary, actually.
I purchased an iPod touch – on line! Does that count?
Yes, you’re part of the machine, pandora.
Hey, Apple was having a big online sale, and this was the only thing on my daughter’s Christmas list. I hate being part of the problem.
I was trying to talk myself into going to Costco this AM for a TV they had on sale to replace a failing one in my bedroom. But I decided against it — getting to sleep in is rare and I am not a fan of crowds.
And on the CRU thing — it shows how capable these people are in generating a complete narrative that they all believe in (but none of them ever check) out of cherry-picked info. Note that none of them saw much to jump up and down about when it was shown that EXXON has actually been paying for misinformation on climate change for decades.
IN OTHER NEWS — Ignobel Prize broadcast (edited version) is on Talk of the Nation on NPR at 2PM today.
For most electronics including TVs use the geek favorite newegg.com. Everything has detailed specs so you can use the advanced search to sort out exactly what you are looking for. Sign up for their mailing list and get advance notice of special deals.
FYI, the spice at the beginning of the thread is right. I believe the biggest shopping days are around the week before Christmas — when all the men go out and shop!
when all the men go out and shop!
Excuse me… women shop, men buy.
Republicans LIE! A whole lot!
Instead of the mall we went to the Wilmington Parade which was fun. Mummers and high school bands and steppers and a few politicians and floats.Parking was great . A good crowd and I think they were more polite than the crowd at the mall from what I read.
We went to the Labor Day Parade in Sept which was also enjoyable.The City of Wilmington does a good job hosting a parade.
We’re in Ft. Lauderdale where it’s sunny and 76. When we left for the airport in Salisbury at 4:00 AM, the outlets in Rehoboth were packed. Not one available parking space. And the outlets opened at Midnight.
The fact that ‘Black Friday’ started on Thursday made me shutter.
RE: Wilmington Parade
The parade is the project of the Wilmington Jaycees. They do a good job…….however, I was broken hearted there were no bag pipes this year.
A.I. duPont’s Marching Band was, as always, GREAT!!
UN scientists turn on each other: Zorita “Colleagues should be barred from the IPCC process.”
Climate Depot ^ | November 27, 2009 | Marc Morano
A UN scientist is declaring that his three fellow UN climate panel colleagues “should be barred from the IPCC process.” In a November 26, 2009 message on his website, UN IPCC contributing author Dr. Eduardo Zorita writes: “CRU files: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process.” Zorita writes that the short answer to that question is: Short answer: “Because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.” Zorita indicates that he is aware that he is putting his career in jeopardy by going after…
Hopes rise for climate talks as rich countries ante up
Taipei Times ^ | November 29, 2009
Hopes suddenly rose on Friday that a new global climate pact was within reach after rich nations attending a Commonwealth summit in the capital of Trinidad offered to pay poorer countries to help seal the deal. “Success in Copenhagen is in sight,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said By showing willingness to meet “the need for money on the table,” it was now “realistic” to expect Copenhagen to result in the framework for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012, Rasmussen said. Copenhagen will not be a talk shop,” Ban said.
it’s all about the money…
And that’s what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann’s mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of “saving the planet” from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the past week, you’re as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask “Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?” Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. The “consensus” warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as “peer-reviewed” if it’s published in Peer-Reviewed Studies published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc. (Peermate of the Month: Al Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar bear fur, on a melting ice floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and “Andy” Revkin would still have wandered out, glassy-eyed, into the streets droning “Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled … .”
Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says 2009 is “the first year of global governance.” Global government, huh? I wonder where you go to vote them out of office. Hey, but don’t worry, it’ll all be “peer-reviewed.”
©MARK STEYN
sing along at home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk
Hide The Decline
I went to Kohl’s in Dover for Black Friday, then we stopped at Walmart in Camden (what a zoo) because the store we wanted to go to wasn’t open yet (Tractor Supply Co.). Then we went home to get the kiddo, who had finally gotten up – and went to the VANS store to get him some skinny jeans for BOGOHO (30 bucks for two pair of pants for a 15 year old – what a steal) and then we had breakfast at IHOP. Oh yeah, stopped at Lowes too. We didn’t spend a lot of money at all…and we only bought what we knew we would get.
Climate Change Data Dumped
Timesonline ^ | November 29, 2009 | Jonathan Leake
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years….In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
Michael Mann first of climate change scientists to be investigated
Examiner ^ | November 29, 2009 | Tony Hake
The fallout from the Climategate event continues as one of its primary participants, Dr. Michael Mann, is to be investigated by his employer, Penn State University. Among the more than one thousand emails released on the Internet, Mann featured prominently in many of them oftentimes making rather controversial comments. Mann serves as the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and has long been one of the more controversial figures in the debate about manmade climate change. He is the author of the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was used by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”…
Climategate claims its first big political scalp (Australia)
The Telegraph ^ | 12/1/2009 | James Delingpole
Australian conservatives have shown the way by dumping the party leader who was in favour of massive carbon taxes and replacing him with one who stated last month that AGW is “crap.”This makes Malcolm Turnbull, the suddenly-ex-leader of Australia’s Liberal party, the first major political victim of the Climategate furore. And his replacement Tony Abbott, the first politician to reap the benefits of the world’s growing scepticism towards ManBearPig. Of the three candidates, he was the only one committed to delaying the Australian government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).The trouble began last week when Australia’s opposition Liberal party began haemorrhaging…
Priceless. They eat their own and call it victory. Your namesake lizard has more brains.
It’s fun watching lizard post story after story about “climategate” without any understanding of what is going on.
For fun, I’ll talk about dumping data. Anyone with a bigger brain than a lizard knows that plenty of data is dumped (or as we like to call it in the data business, rejected) because it doesn’t meet certain standards. These standards or business rules are set up to remove erroneous data such as a book priced at $1 million or a congressional district that doesn’t exist. This stuff happens every day and to think otherwise just shows a lizard-like ignorance.
My favorite part of all this is the charge that climate scientist want to falsify data so they keep getting grants. When the side with some real money at stake — this should be so obvious even conservatives couldn’t miss it — are the players in the fossil fuel industry, which has hundreds of trillions of dollars of mineral wealth waiting to be pumped and mined.
Which group has a greater financial stake, lizardo?
Geezer, a great story with hyperlinks that debunks seven major arguments of climate denialists.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense
who needs data when you have dogma, thow that old sutff out, our moddel works much better without it!
Way to declare your “principles”, Mr. Fry Station.
Willis Eschenbach has a guest post up on Watts Up With That that is VERY significant.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/when-results-go-bad/
He found e-mail correspondence between Phil Jones and Professor Wibjorn Karlen.
Professor Karlen plotted historical temperature data from the Nordic region, available from a source other than CRU, and compared that to the temperature plots for the same region produced by the IPCC, based on CRU data.
Karlen could not find the same extent of late 20th century warming as the IPCC, and asked Jones about it. Jones just blew him off.
Karlen extended his investigations to other parts of the world, and found the same thing in each case – that the temperatures reported by the IPCC were exaggerated when compared to temperature reported by other sources – national and regional organizations. Jones blew him off again.
It seems inescapable that CRU’s depradations include faking the temperature record to show warming higher than it really is.
On further investigation, Eschenbach also found that the CRU datasets include stations in major cities around the world, which builds in the Urban Heat Island effect to bias the temperatures upward.
This another hammer blow, and is likely to be replicated as other similar discoveries are made.